In 1985, a small group of clinicians and scientists gathered in Bonn, Germany, for a meeting that would change the shape of reproductive medicine in Europe. It was there, on that occasion, that the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, ESHRE, was formally founded. Paul Hague, now the founder of Cryolab, was in the room.

This July, when ESHRE returns to London’s ExCeL for its 2026 Annual Meeting, Paul will attend for the 42nd consecutive year. Every single meeting, in every city, without a single year missed, from Bonn in 1985 to London in 2026.

A Young Industry, Watched From the Inside

In 1985, IVF was barely a handful of years old as a clinical reality. The tools embryologists take for granted today, reliable cryopreservation, standardised laboratory protocols, dedicated equipment built specifically for reproductive science, simply did not exist yet. Much of the early work was improvised, borrowed from other branches of science, or built by hand.

Paul was not yet running a company. In 1985, he was Export Sales Manager at Planer, and it was in that role that he attended the very first meeting in Bonn, a small, modest gathering compared to what it would become. The event grew larger every single year that followed, and Paul grew with it, returning again and again as the meeting expanded from a niche scientific gathering into one of the largest fixtures in the international reproductive medicine calendar.

Fifteen Years an Attendee, Then a Founder

For roughly a decade and a half, Paul kept returning to ESHRE year after year in his role at Planer, watching the science, the equipment and the industry mature around him. It was this sustained, close-up view of the field, its equipment gaps, its emerging needs, its growing scale, that eventually led him to found Cryolab in the early 2000s.

Unlike most founders, Paul did not enter the cryogenics and IVF equipment sector as an outsider trying to learn the market. He had already spent years inside it, first as Export Sales Manager at Planer and then as a founder in his own right, sitting in the same lecture halls and walking the same exhibition floors as the clinicians and embryologists he would go on to supply. Cryolab’s own product range, including its CryoStork dry shippers and CryoNest storage vessels, along with the recently launched Spermscope cell analysis chamber, grew directly out of problems Paul had watched laboratories wrestle with, year after year, at ESHRE itself.

Four Decades of Change, One Constant

Since 1985, almost everything about the field has changed beyond recognition. Vitrification overtook slow freezing as the standard for embryo and oocyte storage. Laboratory air quality, traceability and witnessing protocols moved from afterthoughts to non-negotiable standards. ESHRE itself grew from a few hundred attendees in a single German conference hall into one of the largest and most influential gatherings in reproductive medicine anywhere in the world.

Through all of it, one thing stayed fixed: Paul’s seat in the room, every single year.

“In the early days of ESHRE, when the exhibitors were relatively small, it was more of a social club, and exhibitors would get together in the evenings,” Paul recalls. “This seems to be a thing of the past, but it leaves me with some very fond memories.”

Why 42 Years Without a Gap Matters

Conferences are easy to skip. Diaries get busy, priorities shift, and most people in any industry, however committed, will eventually miss a year here and there. A perfect, unbroken 42-year streak, spanning changes in host countries and decades of scientific upheaval, is vanishingly rare in any field.

It also says something about how Cryolab operates. A company whose founder has personally tracked the evolution of reproductive science from its earliest formal meeting is a company whose understanding of the industry runs deeper than a typical supplier relationship.

Meet Paul at ESHRE 2026

Cryolab will be exhibiting at ESHRE 2026, held at ExCeL London from 5 to 8 July, at Stand D08, marking Paul’s 42nd consecutive Annual Meeting. If you have ever crossed paths with Paul at ESHRE, whether at the very first meeting in Bonn or at any point across the four decades since, the Cryolab team would love to hear your story. Visit us at Stand D08, say hello, and help us mark a genuinely unusual milestone in this industry’s history.

Cryolab has supplied cryogenic equipment and IVF laboratory consumables to clinics, sperm banks, andrology labs and research institutions for over two decades. Visit Cryolab at ESHRE 2026, ExCeL London, 5 to 8 July.