Hübner buys Cobolt to expand analytical business FOCUS BUSINESS NEWS
In December 2015, Hübner Group, a German system supplier for the transportation industry, acquired Cobolt, a Swedish provider of lasers for analytical instrumentation systems. The merger of the two companies – who will make their first joint appearance in February 2016 at Photonics West, San Francisco – is expected to result in a strengthened business that will serve not only the growing global photonics markets, but also the
wider test and measurement and process control markets. Hübner, headquartered in
Kassel, Germany, has its roots as a system supplier for the transportation industry. In 2006, the company entered into new technology markets in the fields of photonics, terahertz and high-frequency electronics. Since then, the Group has brought several innovations to market maturity, such as the tunable laser C-Wave and the T-Cognition /
T-Spectralyzer. Both were awarded a Prism Award at Photonics West 2014.
Cobolt, based in Stockholm,
Sweden, started as a University spin-off 15 years ago, and is now a well-established supplier of a broad range of single-frequency lasers for analytical applications. The acquisition strengthens the Hübner footprint in these markets, according to Ingolf Cedra, member of the corporate board of management of Hübner: ‘Cobolt
fits perfectly into our growth plan and I very much look forward to our cooperation and new developments in our joint product portfolio.’ Dr Håkan Karlsson, CEO of Cobolt AB, added: ‘Following our increasing penetration of markets for process and quality control equipment, it makes a lot of sense to merge with a strong corporate partner to better support OEM customers in these fields… The merger with Hübner will allow us to scale up our production.’
News from EPIC By Carlos Lee, director general, EPIC
Distributors with added value S
uccessful distributors bring value to suppliers, by extending their market understanding and penetration, and
to customers – not only by supplying products and installing and servicing them, but also by helping them to design their own solution at the optimum cost/performance ratio. Distributors such as AMS Technologies, Altechna, Acal BFi, and Photon Lines are key players in the photonics ecosystem, providing valuable services to system integrators. These companies are positioned as ‘solution providers’, and offer a broad range of components and R&D solutions to cater to a wide and diverse range of applications, such as imaging, industrial control, forensic, fibre optic network, medicine, defence, material processing, and more.
The role of distributor has changed greatly
over the years and follows the trend of electronic components distribution. A lot of standard photonic components can now be bought directly over the internet and companies such as Edmund Optics and Thorlabs, as well as many manufacturers, have developed an operational excellence to ship small orders cost effectively.
8 ELECTRO OPTICS l FEBRUARY 2016
‘ The role of distributor has changed greatly over the years’
With the shift of the photonics value chain from hardware and technology to an application solution focus, the role of the distributor becomes different now. Rather than being offered bulk standard components, customers now expect a much deeper engagement from the distributor in the design cycle, all the way down to driving and delivering turn-key solutions. Jean-Claude Sanudo, European business development director for Acal BFi Photonics Business Unit, quoted one of his engineers: ‘My job used to be to find products for my customers; what you are now asking me is to find customers for my suppliers and solutions for my customers. It’s a
completely different daily job.’ AMS Technologies has understood this
evolution well, and has invested in its own European design centre to support custom designs and solutions. And, Altechna in Lithuania has invested in new coating facilities to produce unique laser optical components both with customised, and a broad diversity of, optical coatings. Distributors are useful to address local
markets where companies are not directly present, and they play a pivotal role both
Visit to Photon Lines in St-Germain-en-Laye near Paris, a photonics distributor with ‘added-value’
for the supplier and customer, especially if they add value through additional services, such as technical support, training, quality measurements, equipment maintenance and repair, or first level diagnostics for damaged equipment. ‘Our strategic and original position has always been to be a distributor with strong added value and customer service. This is why our team includes not only sales engineers but also PhDs to address our product line in CCD, CMOS, and sCMOS based scientific cameras, lasers, splicers...’ said Eric Drean, director at Photon Lines. If your company is looking for a distributor in Europe or abroad, please do not hesitate to contact me for recommendations at carlos.lee@
epic-assoc.com. l
@electrooptics |
www.electrooptics.com
EPIC
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