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CIE: What markets will provide the most opportunities for Princeps going forward? David Nash: I think aerospace, military and defence are always going to be the larger portion of our business. It’s a lot more sustainable in some respects – some defence programmes can last 15 years, so if you’re winning tenders, you can build your business around it.


The other sectors we’re in – medical, industrial, energy, automotive, transport, broadcast for example - do have their peaks and troughs when there are shortages, but we will never move away from those, they will always be segments of the business. We also provide kitting services, which is a very successful part of our business. If a customer has a bill of materials that they buy constantly, and they have to go to 50 different suppliers, it can be challenging for their business and saturate a lot of costs. We take care of that so they only deal with one supplier, and we deliver all the goods together.


CIE: Has your business been negatively affected by the instability of the last few years, created by the pandemic?


David Nash: I think it will be very similar to the end of this year, but I think it will flatten out even more. Manufacturers will start to understand their demand and their forecasting better. My only slight concern would be if the demand has dropped now, manufacturers may slow down their production, which could cause a peak in 18 months to two years. They may also obsolete a lot of products because of it or they may move fabrication from Asia to America or to Europe or the UK, which will disrupt distribution or production as well.


David Nash: For our business, totally the opposite. There’s definitely been a spike in demand. But the unfortunate factor for the end user is the price went up on a lot of products because the manufacturers weren’t making them because they couldn’t. Any pool of stock that was out there was a high premium. So, a lot of companies are probably struggling from that side of it. From a supply chain point of view, it is calming down, some of the manufacturers have caught up, and prices are coming a little bit more to where they should be. That gives a slight, difficult nature to the person who’s bought the


product, because they may be sitting on too much stuff. Now, they might have to try and sell their products as excess. Again, they paid a premium, so they’re probably not going to get the price they want. But for us, we’ve had continuous growth in our revenue. Even over the last two years, we’ve had good growth, but it hasn’t made it unsustainable for the next two or three years. I think operating in an eclectic mix of markets has been one of the factors that has helped us to be so successful.


CIE: What do you think will happen in the market in 2024?


CIE: What challenges or opportunities do you think next year will bring? David Nash: I think the only challenge for us is to make sure that we’re providing great service and great communication to all our customers. Design-in designing with manufacturers like on-systems will help us to build a platform to speak to more MOD contractors. So, we’re not just the distributor they go to when they’ve got a component shortage, but we can provide solutions too.


https://princeps.co.uk


We offer a broad range of detectors, light sources, spectrometers, fast shutters and polarisation modulators, variable neutral density filters and Time of Flight sensors, including custom solutions.


XUV to MIR Solutions Spectrometers


Compact & high resolution, 180-2500nm


Silicon Photodiodes and Photomultipliers Direct electron/x-ray to NIR MIR Detectors


Lead Sulphide & Lead Selenide, 1-5μm


LED Components and Systems UVC to NIR Laser Diodes


Singlemode and multimode, 445-1850nm Thermal IR Emitters


Steady state and pulsed


Time Of Flight (TOF) Sensors High accuracy, 1.5cm - 100m


Liquid Crystal Optics Shutters, Polarisation modulators and filters For Solutions www.cieonline.co.uk. 25th /26th


October, SEC, Glasgow Visit us on stand 512


www.aptechnologies.co.uk | info@aptechnologies.co.uk | +44(0)1225 780400 Components in Electronics October 2023 31


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