Looking for unresolved problems
Servomex’s strategic positioning in the gas analysis market

Wherever oxygen gas is analysed in industrial processes for safety enhancement, process efficiency or product quality control, a Servomex gas analyser is often not far away. This is hardly surprising, since the company started producing oxygen analyzers based on a paramagnetic cell design back in 1952. Dr. Linda Bell, Managing Director, explains the future strategy.

PROCESS: Dr. Bell, your parent company Spectris supplies products to nearly every sector of industry. Despite the fact that the group is made up of number of individual firms, there is no brand consolidation or concentration on core areas of expertise. Do you think that this approach reflects current realities?
Dr. Bell: Spectris has grown very rapidly over the past ten years through acquisitions. The core areas of expertise are balanced and fall under the general heading of instrumentation which is used in complex industrial production processes. All of these companies are specialists in niche applications and operate successfully under their own brand names in worldwide markets. A single-brand strategy makes no sense in this context. We do of course
have synergies, but the Spectris business model is to handle financial and legal matters centrally and allow the individual companies to concentrate on their real strengths. Each company operates as an autonomous business unit.

PROCESS: Many companies follow a “one face to the customer” strategy...
Dr. Bell: If we were to offer our wide range of very specialized products from a single source, we would lose market depth. Affiliated companies work together in cases where that makes sense, but this is not dictated from above. We all work hard to focus on our customers’ needs in our own specialised market areas.
PROCESS: What is the turnover of the Spectris group and what are your turnover goals?
Dr. Bell: Spectris has 16 individual companies which have a total turnover of about $1 billion. Half of the companies have their headquarters in Europe and the
other half in the US. Servomex makes an important contribution to overall corporate turnover, and we plan to double our turnover within five years.
PROCESS: That is very ambitious. How has Servomex developed since the take-over by Spectris?
Dr. Bell: Servomex was taken over by Spectris in 1999. When I joined the company in 2001, we went through a corporate restructuring phase. We have now positioned ourselves so that we are able to meet future technological challenges and generate sustainable growth, which will be in the 10 to 15 percent range this year. Growth in Asia is particularly good at the moment, and we are currently building up our own production facilities over there. The US is our largest market worldwide. This year our turnover was distributed as follows: 45 percent in Europe and the Middle East, 35 percent in America and 20 percent in Asia.
PROCESS: What do you see as the greatest challenge you face in improving your products?
Dr. Bell: Our measurement cells and technology are based on well established technology. We have already started a programme to make our products and systems more compact and improving their ease of operation through user friendly interfaces.
PROCESS: Is that the only thing that users expect from your systems in addition to precision and reliability?
Dr. Bell: No, they are also being de-
signed with ease of maintenance in mind and weare developing all our new
products paying much closer attention to what customer’s needs are appropriate to their specific application. We also take into consideration the requirement from our customers to implement cost effective gas analysis solutions without compromising key characteristics such as precision and
reliability.
PROCESS: Calibration is another important issue. Are there any new engineering developments which will help users reduce the time and effort involved?Dr. Bell: The calibration requirements are very application specific and will vary from customer to customer. However, because our analysers are made to a very high performance specification typically they do not need frequent calibration in comparison to some of the other equipment available in the market.PROCESS: What are suitable applications for your devices and how to you differentiate yourselves from your competitors? Dr. Bell: We consciously distance ourselves from mass producers by being the first to ask our customers what instrumentation problems still need to be resolved for which processes and applications. Our products are used in a wide variety of specialist gas analysis applications where we have many years experience. We have continued to develop our technology and
products to achieve higher levels of performance from more cost effective solutions.