Held in Orlando, Florida from February 26 to March 1, the 68th annual Pittcon conference encompassed 713 exhibitors over 150,000 ft² (13,935 m²) of exhibition space and 2,000 technical presentations, including 68 symposia. According to preliminary numbers, attendance is estimated at 11,500, which would make it higher than last year’s show in Chicago, Illinois (see IBO 3/15/17). The top five countries with attendees from outside the US were China, Canada, Japan, the UK and Germany.

The exhibition consisted of 713 exhibitors from 33 countries occupying 1,247 booths. Among the exhibitors were 92 companies new to Pittcon, such as Leica Microsystems. Companies that exhibited last year but did not return this year included Beckman Coulter Life Sciences, Olympus and PerkinElmer.

A number of vendors with which IBO spoke suggested the show be held every two years, perhaps alternating with Analytica (which will take place this April), to stem declining attendance. This year, also notable was the decline in press attendance. For some companies with which IBO spoke, press coverage is an important factor in exhibiting.

Bruker, Shimadzu Scientific Instruments, Thermo Fisher Scientific and Waters continued their Pittcon tradition of holding press conferences early in the conference. Each company highlighted products launched at the show and in the prior year. Innovation was a theme that each company discussed, as well as the desire to provide customers with a combination of their instruments, consumables, software, service and application support. Solutions for the environmental, food and biopharmaceutical markets were highlighted in line with Pittcon’s scientific focus.

At the Waters press conference, Jeff Mazzeo, PhD, vice president of Marketing at Waters, stated that Waters’ “sole focus is innovation,” and stated that the company has over one thousand R&D employees.  The company disclosed the sale of 2,047 units of the Waters ACQUITY Arc system in 30 months, with nearly half going into the QC market. By region, Asia, Europe and the Americas accounted for 54%, 27% and 19% of sales, respectively.

The company noted its launch earlier this year of the latest version of its ACQUITY Arc Bio system, a bio-inert version of the Arc (see Pittcon 2018 New Products: Part 1). In addition, the company announced it has introduced a new program to expand ACQUITY UPLC and QDa mass detector sales in the academic end-market. The company’s TA Instruments business highlighted three new products, including two new DMA (Dynamic Mechanical Analysis) systems (see Pittcon 2018 New Products: Part 1).

Shimadzu Scientific Instruments’ press conference detailed seven new products introduced in recent months, including GC, FT-IR, HPLC, MALDI, and XRF systems. For many of the systems, the company highlighted simplified maintenance, speed of analysis and software integration. In particular, the company discussed the Nexera Mikros LC/MS’ (see Pittcon 2018 New Products: Part 1) UF-Link for microflow column installation without affecting the ESI spray needle’s position, as well as the ClickTek nut on the Next GC-2030 for one-step access to the injector port without tools.

Bruker also presented a parade of recently introduced products that spanned applied to research to life science and clinical end-markets. These include the MPA II FT-NIR system for pharmaceutical QC (see Pittcon 2018 New Products: Part 1) including method development as well as two micro-ESA-based dedicated analyzers for food-related analyses (beer freshness, edible oil analysis). The company also announced the expansion of its IVDr-by-NMR solution for phenomics research to biobanking applications for metabolic testing of urine samples. Bruker President and CEO Frank Laukien, PhD, noted this system’s high throughput and low cost per sample compared to LC/MS analysis. In addition, at the press conference, Professor Jeremy Nicholson, PhD, of Imperial College London gave a talk discussing his research on molecular phenotyping using both MS and NMR for applications such as the structural elucidation of unknown biomarkers.

Thermo Fisher Scientific discussed a broad swath of new products, covering GC, IC, LC, molecular spectroscopy, atomic spectroscopy and EM, as well as its Chromeleon CDS and cloud capabilities. Dan Shine, senior vice President and president of the company’s Analytical Instruments Group, spoke to the company’s innovation as well, citing that 6.6% of Thermo Fisher 2017 manufacturing revenue was invested in R&D. The company discussed new products as well as its service offering, noting figures of over 7,000 service engineers and 2,800 support personnel. Application areas discussed included biopharmaceutical workflows and food testing. Jakob Gudbrand, vice president and general manager, Chromatography, for Thermo Fisher Scientific, cited the company as having one of the broadest portfolios of Food Solutions, encompassing techniques such as GC, LC, IC, isotopic and elemental analysis, and molecular spectroscopy.

Other companies holding press conferences at the show included JEOL, which provided updates on its NMR and SEM product lines. At its press conference, Anton Paar discussed its latest product and company developments, including its recent US office openings in Houston, Texas, and Los Angeles, California, and plans to expand into the Midwest next year. CEM and Metrohm held their press conferences on the exhibit floor. CEM launched the EDGE (see Pittcon 2018: Top New Products) as well as announced $100 million in annual revenues. Metrohm USA gave out its 2018 Young Chemist Award and revealed its work with various standards organization on four new IC methods.

Pittcon is always a chance to examine product trends, particularly in regards to system design and productivity improvements. “Two-in-one” combination instruments continue to multiply. One form such systems take is the ability to do two or more different types of analyses in one system. At this year’s show, examples included HORIBA’s Duetta, IKA’s ElectraSyn 2.0,  MOCON’s PetroAlert Series 9200 (see Pittcon 2018 New Products: Part 1) and Microtrac’s Sync system (see Pittcon 2018: Top New Products). In the case of Thermo Scientific’s Vanquish Duo UHPLC systems, two systems for performing the same analysis are combined into one instrument, provided cost savings as well as a back-up system.

The shrinking size of instrumentation continues to be a theme among product introductions. Exhibiting at Pittcon this year were the latest wave of portable GCs from Nanova Environmental and Zebra Analytix (see Pittcon 2018 New Products: Part 1). Portable LC systems, a novel area for miniaturization, were also on display from Axcend and PolyLC (see Pittcon 2018 New Products: Part 1).

Pittcon 2019 will be held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from March 17 to March 21. The conference was last held in the city in 2013. In subsequent years, the show will move between previous locations, before heading west to San Diego, California, in 2024.