Company Announcements

Eurocontrol announced that its letter of intent to acquire Austin Automation and Instrumentation (see IBO 11/30/14) expired as of December 31, 2014. Austin will continue to distribute the products of Xenemetrix, a Eurocontrol subsidiary, in the US and Asia.

Anton Paar announced that it will integrate DECTRIS’s EIGER R 1 M detection into its SAXSpace laboratory SWAXS system. Anton Paar is the first partner to sign a frame contract for EIGER detectors.

In February, DKSH signed an agreement with XOS for China for market-expansion services.

Spectris disclosed in its annual financial release that it acquired Lab Corporation Scientifique Claisse (see IBO 6/30/14) for £10.4 million ($17.0 million).

Product Introductions

FOSS introduced the Dumatec 8000 for Dumas nitrogen analysis in food and feed products. It offers results in three minutes.

PerkinElmer launched in December the Syngistix Atomic Spectroscopy Software platform for working across multiple inorganic elemental-analysis techniques. It features workflow navigation and a harmonized user interface across all PerkinElmer atomic spectroscopy techniques.

In January, Hitachi High-Tech Sciences introduced the FT150 Series of X-ray coating-thickness gauges for measuring plating thickness and composition at microspots of less than 100 µm in diameter.

Oxford Instruments launched a new model of its MAXXI 6 coating-thickness measurement system. The analysis can be done in three steps. It is capable of analyzing solids or liquids over an element range from Al13 to U92.

In March, Oxford Instruments introduced the X-MET8000CG for regulatory-compliance screening of consumer goods.

In February, StellarNet released the portable StellarCASE-LIBS (laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy) instrument, featuring a preconfigured “Open & Measure” application and eight-hour battery life.

Analytik Jena launched the PlasmaQuant MS and PlasmaQuant MS Elite ICP-MS systems, which are based on the technology it acquired from Bruker (see IBO 8/15/14). The systems use only half of the amount of argon gas of competitive systems, according to Analytik Jena. The Elite model offers 1.5 GHz sensitivity.

SPECTRO Analytical Instruments launched the new SPECTRO xSORT family of handheld ED-XRF spectrometers, available in three versions: the xSORT Alloy, the xSORT AlloyPlus and the xSORT NonAlloy.

EDAX introduced the XLNCE SMX-BEN, the first in a series of new XRF analyzers for coating thickness and composition analysis.