Edinburgh Instruments Restructures and Celebrates 40 Years Contribution to Science and Industry

Edinburgh Instruments (Livingston, UK), is celebrating its 40th anniversary with a restructuring of the company to focus on its new Edinburgh Photonics and Edinburgh Sensors divisions. The two divisions will spearhead sales of existing and new products to the scientific research and development communities, commercial research, environmental monitoring, and process industries. The company, founded by Chief Scientific Officer Professor Desmond Smith OBE FRS, was the first commercial spin out from Heriot-Watt University back in 1971 and the first private company on Britain’s first University Research Park based in Riccarton, on the outskirts of Edinburgh. The company, which currently employs around 70 people, has recently undergone a restructure to focus on its new divisions, and this, according to Managing Director Alan Faichney, sets the benchmark to help further accelerate international growth for in-demand product portfolio.

“The photonics side of the business now accounts for just over 80% of our sales, with the BRIC nations accounting for the lion’s share of our exports, although we are seeing excellent sales coming through from Eastern Europe and Asia as well. We’ve had strong export sales into China for some considerable time, but interestingly, Russia is a good example of where we have seen a surge of sales activity.

There are so many geographically remote and specialist universities focusing on particular types of research that require our products and expertise, so it opens up an entirely new opportunity for our next generation of scientific instrumentation and laser products.”

To support these activities, the company has launched three new websites: www.edinst.com; www.edinburghphotonics.com; and www.edinburghsensors.com