Millbrook began life as Millbrook Instruments Limited which was founded in 1995, with a philosophy to use advanced technology to provide simple solutions to real world analysis problems. Ten years on, Millbrook still retains the flexibility to respond to customer needs, now with an expanding range of unique desktop instruments for nanoscale surface analysis. Millbrook has also matured into a company with the stability to support those products for many years to come.

Millbrook’s first nanometrology product was the MiniSIMS, originally known as the Chemical Microscope. Over the years, Millbrook has been recognised for its achievements in developing this unique instrument. Most significantly, Millbrook won the Annual Achievement Award of the Scientific Instrument Makers' Company in December 1999. This Award is given each year in recognition of the single product that is judged to have made the greatest contribution to the British scientific instrument industry.

In 1997 the company received an initial venture capital investment from BNFL Enterprise Ltd., part of an international company with strong local influence. In January 2002, the corporate structure of Millbrook was reorganised with the formation of a parent company Millbrook Scientific Instruments plc in preparation for an application for admission to the OFEX investment market.

The successful flotation of Millbrook on OFEX in 2002 marked the beginning of a new chapter in Millbrook’s history. Since then there has been an increasing focus on international sales, building on the strong MiniSIMS user base initially established in the UK. The investment has also allowed recruitment of the key people needed to support a higher level of sales, and an acceleration of an ambitious development programme for the MiniSIMS and related products.

Millbrook has also broadened its product range through diversification into other areas of nanoscale surface measurement. In March 2003, Millbrook Scientific Instruments plc acquired Cambridge-based Aquila Instruments Limited, a company founded in 2000 with proprietary technology that was acquired outright from a Canadian company. Aquila’s desktop nkd series spectrophotometers are designed to provide rapid precision measurements of the optical properties of thin film surface coatings.