Planer was formed in 1973 as a manufacturing company incorporating new ideas and spin off technology from a sister consulting company - G.V. Planer Ltd which started in 1953. Based in Sunbury UK, close to London's Heathrow Airport, it occupies 2,000 sq. metres of factory space and employs a highly qualified team of technical managers, applications engineers and product specialists for the design and supply of state of the art medical electronic and electro mechanical equipment for hospitals, research laboratories, pharmaceutical companies and industry.

The  company became Planer plc in 2001 and now specialises in medical, botanical and biological applications. It is well known as one of the world's leading suppliers of equipment for low temperature biological work and cryo-preservation. Having pioneered the development and use of products for controlled rate freezing and thawing for animal and human in vitro fertilisation, the company received the Queen's Award for Technology in 1984.

It has since added to its core expertise by going on to develop and market a wide range of freezers, ancillaries and consumables associated with the safe storage and preservation of medical and biological specimens - cord blood, bone marrow, botanical matter, semen, oocytes, recalcitrant seeds, skin, ovarian tissue,  heart valves, blood vessels and others. Recent new Planer products include software systems for stored frozen specimen location, laboratory alarm systems and web based network products for sample and equipment monitoring.

Planer has distributors and service engineers in over fifty countries and exports eighty percent of the products it  manufactures which are  designed and manufactured in-house to ISO and Medical Device standards.