Film restoration specialist João de Oliveira (following a life of work in film archives around the world) founded this niche laboratory 6 years ago with the fundamental purpose to work closely with clients for the preservation and restoration of the world’s film heritage. “For us” says de Oliveira “the films we work on are exceedingly important cultural artefacts, sometimes unique survivors, and we think it is our main responsibility to care for them and restore them to their original glory.” PresTech has a multidisciplinary team of professionals, covering material sciences, photographic chemistry, electronics, computer science and precision mechanics. Constant research and development of new techniques to preserve and restore films entrusted to its care is an everyday activity. PresTech’s strength is its knowledge and understanding of film technology and evolution. This knowledge combined with in-depth understanding of film deterioration processes allows the restorers to interpret how a given image would have looked before deterioration and also to identify the original processes involved in its making.

Cecil Hepworth's 1903 Alice in Wonderland, the first screen adaptation of Lewis Carroll's novel, was digitally restored at PresTech for the BFI National Archive from a seriously deteriorated sole surviving print. The 107 year old fragile film was liquid-gate scanned to produce a restored tinted version.

The lab keenly adheres to the International Federation of Film Archives ethical postures on film restoration. Its determination to do the best possible restoration made it create a digital laboratory in order to shift from conventional to digital technology whenever best for a given project. The team constantly checks the limits of both technologies and occasionally creates new methods and techniques. In 2007 de Oliveira was made an Honorary Fellow of the British Kinematograph Society for his contribution to the development of film restoration and specifically for his work in developing a new method for the restoration of the early additive colour film process Dufaycolor Film.

In 2008 PresTech received from the Giornate del Cinema Muto early film festival a silver medal for its work in restoring the Russian Victor Shiryaev’s Collection.