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Optimism Reigns Among Instrument Firms At Pittcon

Instrument Conference: Despite currency concerns, analytical toolmakers look for strong sales in 2015

by Marc S. Reisch
March 12, 2015 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 93, Issue 11

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Credit: Peter Cutts Photography
A marching band helped open the Pittcon show in New Orleans.
A performer at Pittcon in New Orleans.
Credit: Peter Cutts Photography
A marching band helped open the Pittcon show in New Orleans.

Instrument firm executives at the Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry & Applied Spectroscopy (Pittcon) this week said they want to see last year’s healthy sales pace continue into 2015. However, they are concerned about the impact the strong U.S. dollar will have on their bottom lines.

“Business improved overall in 2014,” said Arthur G. Caputo, executive vice president of chromatography expert Waters Corp. But the strong U.S. dollar will likely have a negative impact on earnings, he cautioned.

“We are all dealing with currency exchange issues,” noted Dan Shine, president of Thermo Fisher Scientific’s chromatography and mass spectrometry business. To offset the dollar’s 30% climb against the euro over the past year, Thermo Fisher will try to supply European customers from Asian instead of U.S. factories.

Jon DiVincenzo, senior vice president of PerkinElmer, agreed that currency issues will pose a challenge. But on the positive side, he said sales in China could accelerate, because a business slowdown stemming from internal government anticorruption actions appears to be over.

Many tool suppliers used Pittcon, held in New Orleans, as an opportunity to trot out new laboratory software and as a showcase for miniaturization technology.

PerkinElmer, back at Pittcon after a four-year absence, used the conference to exhibit tools including a high-end liquid chromatography system, the Altus UPLC, for industrial analysis. It’s controlled with Empower 3 software from competitor Waters.

Other firms emphasized software to handle the ever-increasing volume of data streaming out of analytical instruments. Waters showed customers its NuGenesis lab information management system, which it claimed is less cumbersome than competing systems. Thermo Fisher unveiled its AppsLab online database, which one executive called an “iTunes-like library for chromatography methods with a checklist for testing reagents.”

Small but capable instruments and components also debuted. Florida-based BioTools demonstrated a family of portable Raman microscopes each weighing less than 40 lb.

Texas Instruments offered spectroscopy module makers a microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) chip optimized for handheld devices. And Si-Ware Systems, an Egyptian semiconductor maker, brought out a complete module containing its MEMS chip for Fourier transform infrared spectrometers.

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