With more than $200 million in sales last year, Austrian firm Anton Paar has a long history of manufacturing analytical instruments for several product markets. This breadth is not common among companies of its size, and its instruments range from materials characterization to molecular spectroscopy to process analytics systems. The company’s high proportion of R&D to sales and nonprofit ownership also distinguish it from other firms.

Founded in 1922 as a single-person machine-repair shop, the company expanded as a family-run business, developing its first analytical instrument, the Kratky small-angle x-ray camera, in the 1950s. The firm now has approximately two thousand employees worldwide and produces about one hundred different instruments. In 2013, the company’s revenues grew 6.3% to about $280 million. While Anton Paar’s compound annual growth rate over the last 10 years was 12.5%, year-to-year growth since 2007 has varied, reaching 37.2% in 2010. The company projects 2014 revenues to increase approximately 19.8%.

Eleven years ago, the firm became the nonprofit Santner Foundation. “In 2003, when the former CEO and majority shareholder Ulrich Santner retired, the family analysed the ownership situation and came to the conclusion that it is vital to the family members to manage the company but irrelevant whether it is in our possession or not,“ Friedrich Santner, PhD, CEO, Anton Paar, told IBO. This restructuring has produced benefits for the company and its employees. “This was a big extra motivation to our employees,” Dr. Santner explained. “They know that the company can´t be sold anymore and that the profits generated are reinvested into the company, as there are no shareholders looking for dividends.” The Foundation supports research in natural science and technology, and addiction prevention and rehabilitation.

Notably, Anton Paar invests approximately 20% of its revenues in R&D. “There is a strict and clear development process in place with two main streams,” stated Dr. Santner. “Incremental developments on existing products [is the first], and as a second stream, completely new innovations for new applications and new markets. We try to balance our R&D funds on both streams.”

The firm manufactures products for several analytical-instrument markets, including materials characterization and molecular spectroscopy. Within the atomic spectroscopy market, it offers x-ray diffraction systems. For microwave-assisted chemistry, it provides instruments for microwave synthesis. Its process product lines include inline viscometers and polarimeters, and density and sound-velocity sensors.

Within the materials characterization market, the company has particular strength in rheometry. The firm accounts for almost a quarter of the rheometer and viscometer market, according to IBO estimates. Sonja Hiebler, Corporate Communications manager for Anton Paar, told IBO that rheometry is the company’s second-largest market. The company is among the top five firms producing petroleum analyzers, according to IBO estimates. The product line includes Pensky-Marten flash-point–testing equipment, corrosive testers, and instruments for distillation, cold behavior and vapor pressure. In addition, the company produces instruments for the thermal-analysis and particle-testing markets.

In the molecular spectroscopy segment, the company supplies density meters, polarimeters and refractometers. “[D]ensity and concentration meters for measurements in laboratories . . . is our biggest market, and here we have the largest market share,” said Ms. Hiebler. In the 1960s, the company developed the oscillating U-tube method, now a standard technology for density meters. In this technique, a U-shaped tube of known volume is filled with a liquid sample. The tube is made to vibrate, with the eigenfrequency (characteristic frequency) of the tube influenced by the sample’s mass, which can be used to calculate its density.

Anton Paar serves its end-markets by providing multiple product lines. The company is especially strong in the beverage, polymers, paints and coatings industries, and academic institutions, according to Dr. Santner. Within the beverage market, breweries and soft-drink producers are Anton Paar’s focus. “In the beverage industry, we have a portfolio of complete solutions for our customers. The same approach will be used for the new target markets,” said Dr. Santner. The company’s analytical instruments for the beverage industry include density meters, refractometers and turbidity meters and, on the process side, carbon dioxide, density and flow-through sound velocity sensors.

The company is applying a similar approach to additional end-markets. “[W]e have started to intensify our sales efforts also to the pharmaceutical and petrochemical markets, mainly driven by the acquisitions that we made in the past years,” stated Dr. Santner. The company has acquired three companies over the last seven years. As Ms. Hiebler explained, “The [2007] acquisition of Dr. Kernchen, now Anton Paar OptoTec, has opened a new [path] to the pharmaceutical industry.” Dr. Kernchen makes refractometers and polarimeters. Anton Paar’s acquisition in 2012 of Petrotest (see IBO 2/29/12), a producer of instruments to the petrochemical industry, formed Anton Paar ProveTec, and added to the range of its instruments for the petroleum industry. “This fits perfectly well [with] our range of density meters and viscometers for the petroleum industry. With this acquisition, we are able to solve most of the measuring tasks in the petroleum laboratories. Our goal is to dominate the petroleum labs with a complete range of products,” explained Dr. Santner.

Like the Petrotest acquisition, the 2013 purchase of CSM (see IBO 11/15/13), now Anton Paar TriTec, added new product lines. CSM’s products include indentation testers, scratch testers and tribometers. Dr. Santner stated that “its range of nanoindenters, tribometers and scratch testers is a perfect fit [for] our range of instruments in rheology and surface characterization. Again, we are now able to solve more measuring problems of the same customer group and serve our customers better.”

Anton Paar has also grown through geographic expansion, especially for direct sales. Over the last three years, the company has opened subsidiaries in Turkey, Italy, Poland, South Africa and Brazil. About half of the company’s sales are in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, while the Americas and Asia Pacific each make up approximately one quarter. In January 2015, Anton Paar will open an additional three subsidiaries in South Korea, Malaysia and Singapore. Asked about opportunities for the company in Asia, Dr. Santner responded, “Our business is widely spread throughout all industries, as we measure basic physical parameters. Therefore, we have started [our] own sales operations in many major countries in the past years. Our [experience has shown us] that we can double sales with direct sales operations compared to a third-party–distributor solution.” He added that the company plans to open a regional office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, from which to locally manage the Asia Pacific region.