Another acquisition was announced in February, by Yokogawa, who bought a 44.3% stake in Soteica Visual MESA, based in Houston but operating also out of offices in Spain, Brazil and Argentina.
The intention is to offer their energy management and optimization services through the Yokogawa sales channels, and for co-operative engineering efforts to develop the solution further – a solution interestingly described by Yokogawa with the phrase “Sidewise energy efficiency optimization”.
CEESI, the Colorado Engineering Experiment Station, this year will hold their annual Ultrasonic Flowmeter User’s Workshop in Lisbon, Portugal from 16-18 April, preceded by parallel training courses on (1) the fundamentals of ultrasonic flowmetering, and (2) a course on the uncertainties in the measurements associated with natural gas and liquid flows.
This is the first time this event has been held in Europe, and it will be conducted in partnership with the Dutch Metrology Institute, VSL, from Delft. The associated exhibition will feature most of the European manufacturers of ultrasonic flowmeters.
Last month most of the news flow seems to have emerged around the ARC World Industry Forum, which took place in Orlando, Florida from February 11-14. The major name noticeably missing from the exhibition, out of the main process automation suppliers, was that of Honeywell, which provided a major opportunity for Azbil, the former Yamatake – who had a license agreement with Honeywell until 2002 - to make an impressive entrance, building on their recent acquisitions and initiating further expansion plans.
The name Azbil was introduced on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the company, to signify “human-centered automation” as the new direction for the business. The group philosophy is to “realize safety, comfort and fulfillment in people’s lives and contribute to global environmental preservation through human centered automation”. The management – Seiji Onoki, chairman, and Hirozumi Sone, president and ceo - are striving to extend it both inside and outside Japan, in a drive for global growth.
This will be achieved by strengthening ties with global partners, and so over the last three months Azbil has announced three acquisitions: Telstar of Spain in the Life Automation business; Taco of Japan, a specialist in pneumatic technology and oil mist lubrication systems; and VorTek Instruments of USA, a vortex flowmeter manufacturer.
Further information is available in the review of these acquisitions in the March 2013 issue of the INSIDER.