We get this call most weeks. Someone has bought a clinic and inherited an N-type the previous owner has been using for years, and the validation engineer has just told them they can’t pouch instruments through it. Or they’re setting up a first room and don’t want to spend their start-up budget twice. Either way, they want a straight answer to one question: what do I need to buy?
The short version, for almost every UK podiatry clinic in 2026: a Class B autoclave, 17 or 22 litres, validated to EN 13060. The rest of this piece is the reasoning behind that, the regulations people get tangled up in, and three entry-level models we sell that fit the bill.
HTM 01-05 is the document most podiatrists have heard of, and it doesn’t apply to you. It is the Department of Health’s dental decontamination guidance for primary care in England, and that is where its remit stops. Podiatry clinics align with it voluntarily because there is nothing else of that depth pitched at our profession, but it is not your regulator.
Your regulator is the HCPC. The standard that matters for our purposes is 14.8: you must know the correct principles of sterilisation and decontamination. The HCPC doesn’t tell you which autoclave to buy. It expects you to know enough to buy one that actually works for your loads. That’s the route by which an N-type quietly becomes the wrong answer the moment you pouch anything.
The Royal College of Podiatry publishes its own guidance on reusable instrument decontamination. Members should refer to the current version on the College’s site rather than the older copies that float around suppliers’ download pages.
One more thing to clear up because it confuses people. Most podiatry-only clinics are not registered with the CQC. CQC registration is triggered by certain regulated activities and specific listed professions, and podiatry on its own isn’t one of them. If you’re doing podiatric surgery with a listed practitioner in the room, or you’re contracted to the NHS, take separate advice. Otherwise, CQC isn’t part of this conversation.
EN 13060 governs small steam sterilisers under 60 litres. It defines three cycle classes, and the manufacturers will happily make this sound more complicated than it is.
Class N processes solid, unwrapped, non-hollow instruments. Nothing else. No vacuum phase, so no air gets forced out of cavities or pouches. You cannot pouch through an N-type. You cannot put hinged nippers through one and consider them sterile, because the air trapped in the box joint stops the steam doing its job.
Class S does whatever its manufacturer’s specification says it does. Some are close to a Class B in capability. Many aren’t. Read the spec sheet, because a Class S is only valid for the loads its maker has tested and documented. If your instruments don’t match the list, the cycle isn’t valid even if it ran to completion.
Class B handles the lot. Pre and post-vacuum cycles strip the air out of pouches, hinges, lumens and porous loads. This is the only class that lets you stop thinking about the autoclave and just put your instruments in.
Now look at what a podiatry tray actually contains. Box-joint nail nippers. Reusable scalpel handles. Elevators. Burrs. Forceps. Most of them hinged, most of them pouched for storage sterility. The cycle you need is the one that copes with all of that without you having to check the load list every time. That’s a Class B. The argument is over.
Single-use scalpel blades are routine and sensible. They take a whole risk category off your plate and they’re cheap. Single-use burrs are gaining ground. Some clinics keep a small stock of disposable instruments for higher-risk patients.
It doesn’t change the answer though. If you are keeping reusable nippers, forceps or elevators in your kit, you are sterilising hinged instruments, and you need a Class B. Going fully single-use across every instrument is theoretically possible and almost no one does it because disposable nippers are not a real substitute for proper podiatry nippers.
The three common sizes share the same external dimensions, around 500 by 490 by 600 millimetres. The only thing that changes is the chamber.
17 litres is what most one-podiatrist clinics buy and what most one-podiatrist clinics actually use. Five trays of pouched instruments per cycle, room for a day’s work if you cycle once or twice between sessions. B-cycle times are around 31 minutes on the faster models and 42 minutes on the entry-level units.
22 litres earns its keep in two-chair clinics, in busy mobile practices that batch-process for the next day, and in any setting where you want to fit a full morning’s worth of pouched instruments into one cycle without splitting the load.
28 litres is a dental machine. We do sell it, and it’s the right answer for a busy multi-surgery dental practice. It is wrong for almost every podiatry clinic. If a salesperson is pushing you towards a 28 for a single-handed practice, push back.
Every option below is Class B, manufactured in Italy, CE marked and validated to EN 13060. We sell all three because each one earns its place. Picking between them is about budget and which features matter to you, not capability.
The entry tier of Castellini’s three-rung ladder (C, then Plus, then Platinum). Made by Cefla in Italy, which is the parent company you want behind any decontamination kit you’re buying. Five cycle types, ten-thousand-cycle internal memory, runs off a standard UK socket.
The C does the job. Move up to the Plus or Platinum if you want the faster 31-minute B-cycle and built-in water recycling. For a starting podiatry clinic the standard C is honest value.
Stern Weber doesn’t try to be the premium choice. The SW range is positioned as practical and reliable, with a smaller touchscreen and a simpler feature set. Mains-fed, so add a Pure 100 or Pure 500 in-line water treatment if your supply is hard.
If you want a no-frills Class B and don’t care about cloud platforms and traceability software, this is often the most cost-effective shortlist entry.
Mocom’s entry tier under their Supreme and B Futura models. Same cycle suite, same chamber options. What you’re paying for at Mocom is the design. Wipe-clean surfaces, a footprint that drops into a sterilisation room without taking it over, and a clinical look that holds up when patients can see the machine.
Worth considering if your treatment room is the autoclave’s display case as well as its home.
If you’re a sole practitioner and the cash flow doesn’t stretch to a new Class B this year, refurbished is a legitimate route. We sometimes have Mocom units come back through trade-ins, and we sell them with the IQ/OQ/PQ paperwork already done. We won’t sell one without it.
If you’re buying second-hand from anyone, here is what you want to see before any money changes hands:
Get in touch if you’d like to know what’s currently in stock, and we’ll be honest about whether what we have is right for what you need.
Whatever you end up buying, work through these before you commit:
For a single-handed UK podiatry clinic in 2026, buy a 17-litre Class B autoclave from a serviceable Italian brand, from a supplier who includes installation, validation and a proper UK service contract. Any of the three ranges above will do that job. The choice between them comes down to whether you want speed and water recycling at the top of the Castellini line, no-frills value from Stern Weber, or the Mocom design language sitting in your treatment room.
If you’d rather have a ten-minute conversation than read another buyer’s guide, give us a call. We’ll ask about your caseload, your room, and your budget, and we’ll tell you what we’d put in our own clinic.
