60 years of NORD – this mile­stone is a spe­cial one. The com­pany is char­ac­ter­ised by long-term ex­per­i­ence, ex­tens­ive know-how in more than 100 in­dus­tries, own pro­duc­tion fa­cil­it­ies, great pro­duc­tion depth, and a glob­al net­work. Thanks to its qual­i­fied em­ploy­ees, NORD can provide its cus­tom­ers world­wide with in­di­vidu­al drive solu­tions from a com­pre­hens­ive range of mod­u­lar products and high qual­ity stand­ards.

Com­pany his­tory in ret­ro­spect

After the found­a­tion in 1965, today’s Zahnrad­werk NORD was built in Glinde in 1977 for the man­u­fac­tur­ing of gear com­pon­ents. In 1979, the first for­eign sub­si­di­ar­ies have been foun­ded in the USA, France and Sweden. Today, NORD serves the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket with 48 of its own sub­si­di­ar­ies in 36 coun­tries and fur­ther sales part­ners in more than 50 coun­tries. This al­lows for ser­vice, ad­vice, stor­ing and as­sembly dir­ectly on site – al­ways close to the cus­tom­ers.

NORD has ex­pan­ded its pro­duc­tion by in-house man­u­fac­tur­ing of elec­tric mo­tors, and shortly af­ter­wards star­ted the pro­duc­tion of elec­tron­ic com­pon­ents in Aurich. Due to the high de­mand, the NORD Elec­tron­ic Drivesys­tems sub­si­di­ary in Aurich, Lower Sax­ony, has grown ever since. In 1991, Fer­ti­gung­s­tech­nik NORD was foun­ded in Gade­busch – a plant for ma­chin­ing for the man­u­fac­ture of hous­ings and shafts. The plants in Ger­many, Italy, Po­land, the USA and China are stead­ily ex­pan­ded and mod­ern­ised. The headquar­ters in Bar­gte­heide, where a mod­ern ad­min­is­tra­tion build­ing has re­cently been built, is also in con­tinu­ous de­vel­op­ment.

Tech­no­lo­gic­al high­lights

In 1981, NORD has de­veloped the UNI­CASE™ hous­ing concept, a ground­break­ing in­ven­tion for the in­dus­tri­al pro­duc­tion of gear unit hous­ings, which is still in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ard. In 2000, the fo­cus was on the product launch of de­cent­ral­ised drive tech­no­logy.

In­nov­a­tions pay off 

Just be­fore the turn of the years 2022/2023, NORD passed the one bil­lion euro sales threshold for the first time in the com­pany's his­tory. This shows, how well the man­u­fac­turer’s drive solu­tions meet the re­quire­ments from dif­fer­ent in­dus­tries and how much NORD is ap­pre­ci­ated as a strong and re­li­able part­ner – ex­pressed in 2023 by the com­pany’s claim “Our Solu­tion. Your Suc­cess.”

Out­look after 60 years

2025 will be a very spe­cial year for the NORD DRIVESYS­TEMS Group: For more than 60 years, NORD has been rep­res­ent­ing re­li­able and in­nov­at­ive drive solu­tions. Des­pite the cur­rent eco­nom­ic chal­lenges and un­cer­tain­ties in the glob­al mar­kets, the com­pany looks ahead con­fid­ently. In­nov­at­ive drive solu­tions, in­dustry ex­pert­ise, in­ter­na­tion­al ori­ent­a­tion, high qual­ity stand­ards and a strong glob­al net­work form the basis for sus­tain­able growth. The an­niversary is not only a reas­on to cel­eb­rate but also an in­cent­ive to fur­ther set new in­dustry stand­ards and to fur­ther con­vince cus­tom­ers with power­ful solu­tions.
 

A key goal of the mech­an­ic­al and plant en­gin­eer­ing in­dustry is to achieve cli­mate-neut­ral pro­duc­tion in the fu­ture. This ef­fort is sup­por­ted by the European Uni­on’s European Green Deal, which aims to make Europe cli­mate-neut­ral by 2050. In or­der to achieve this goal and im­ple­ment many oth­er use cases, ac­cur­ate data on en­ergy con­sump­tion in pro­duc­tion is cru­cial. The con­sor­ti­um, con­sist­ing of the or­gan­iz­a­tions ODVA, OPC Found­a­tion, PI and VDMA, has now jointly pub­lished ver­sion 1.0.0 of their ground­break­ing spe­cific­a­tion for in­ter­op­er­able and ef­fi­cient en­ergy man­age­ment in in­dus­tri­al auto­ma­tion and pro­cess auto­ma­tion. This group is chaired by the VDMA.

Di­et­mar Bo­hn, Man­aging Dir­ect­or of PI, ex­plains: “The meas­ure­ment and ana­lys­is of en­ergy con­sump­tion in ma­chines and sys­tems is an ex­tremely im­port­ant top­ic for the fu­ture. We are pleased to make an act­ive con­tri­bu­tion to this im­port­ant ini­ti­at­ive to op­tim­ize en­ergy con­sump­tion and thereby re­duce the harm­ful ef­fects on the en­vir­on­ment caused by waste and sur­plus.”

Stand­ard­ized in­form­a­tion mod­el based on OPC UA

This spe­cific­a­tion defines a stand­ard­ized in­form­a­tion mod­el based on OPC UA that en­ables com­pre­hens­ive en­ergy man­age­ment in in­dus­tri­al auto­ma­tion. “This Power Con­sump­tion Man­age­ment col­lab­or­a­tion en­sures that end users have a highly stand­ard­ized and in­ter­op­er­able means of achiev­ing their en­vir­on­ment­al, so­cial and gov­ernance (ESG) goals,” ex­plains Dr. Al Bey­doun, Pres­id­ent and CEO of ODVA.

The in­tro­duc­tion of this stand­ard will make en­ergy man­age­ment in in­dustry con­sid­er­ably easi­er: com­pan­ies can now re­cord, ana­lyze and use pre­cise and con­sist­ent en­ergy data even more ef­fi­ciently in or­der to fur­ther in­crease their en­ergy ef­fi­ciency. This not only helps to re­duce op­er­at­ing costs, but also to re­duce the eco­lo­gic­al foot­print. Stand­ard­iz­a­tion makes it pos­sible to im­ple­ment in­nov­at­ive tech­no­lo­gies and best prac­tices faster and more ef­fect­ively, which con­trib­utes to more sus­tain­able and en­vir­on­ment­ally friendly pro­duc­tion in the long term. 

Mon­it­or­ing and standby man­age­ment: core con­tent of the new spe­cific­a­tion

The spe­cific­a­tion es­sen­tially com­prises two main con­tent fields: Firstly, mon­it­or­ing, i.e. the dis­play of all types of en­ergy con­sump­tion, in­clud­ing elec­tric­al en­ergy as well as en­ergy from air, wa­ter or coal. Secondly, standby man­age­ment, which is un­der­stood to mean the con­trol and dis­play of vari­ous en­ergy-sav­ing modes on ma­chines and com­pon­ents. It is based on the res­ults of the re­search project “De­vel­op­ment of en­ergy man­age­ment in­ter­faces for IoT tech­no­lo­gies (IoTEn­RG)”. “The aim of the IoTEn­RG re­search project was to make the res­ults avail­able to in­dustry. We were able to con­trib­ute our res­ults dir­ectly to the Joint Work­ing Group and thus sig­ni­fic­antly ac­cel­er­ate the de­vel­op­ment of the OPC UA Com­pan­ion Spe­cific­a­tion,” says Prof. Dr. Niemann from the In­sti­tute for Sensor Tech­no­logy and Auto­ma­tion at the Uni­versity of Ap­plied Sci­ences and Arts in Han­nov­er.

“For di­git­al­iz­a­tion, we need an agree­ment on a com­mon un­der­stand­ing and de­scrip­tion of data, in­clud­ing in the en­ergy sec­tor. OPC UA provides ex­actly that. I am proud that with this joint group, we can also con­trib­ute to the en­ergy trans­ition and thus pro­mote op­tim­ized en­ergy sav­ings through stand­ard­ized and ef­fi­cient mon­it­or­ing,” says Stefan Hoppe, Pres­id­ent of the OPC Found­a­tion.

Ma­chinery Build­ing Block: A step to­wards cli­mate-neut­ral pro­duc­tion

The VDMA has defined a fun­da­ment­al stand­ard for the en­tire mech­an­ic­al and plant en­gin­eer­ing in­dustry, known as “OPC UA for Ma­chinery”. Vari­ous func­tion­al build­ing blocks are spe­cified in this stand­ard. A new build­ing block for en­ergy man­age­ment is be­ing de­veloped based on the pub­lic­a­tion. “The four or­gan­iz­a­tions have been work­ing hard to har­mon­ize and stand­ard­ize in­form­a­tion on en­ergy con­sump­tion in man­u­fac­tur­ing. This is an ex­cel­lent first step to­wards de­fin­ing an up­com­ing OPC UA Build­ing Block for mech­an­ic­al en­gin­eer­ing that will bring the ma­chine and plant man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dustry a big step closer to the goal of cli­mate-neut­ral pro­duc­tion,” says An­dreas Faath, dir­ect­or of the VDMA Ma­chine In­form­a­tion In­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity de­part­ment.

The past year was shaped by glob­al crises and polit­ic­al con­flicts, mak­ing for patchy eco­nom­ic con­di­tions. “2024 was a year of many chal­lenges,” CEO Dr Peter Seld­ers com­men­ted at the com­pany’s an­nu­al me­dia con­fer­ence in Re­in­ach, Switzer­land. “While En­dress+­Hau­s­er did not meet all its tar­gets, the com­pany held up well. We made im­port­ant pro­gress in many areas and have taken our com­pany for­ward.”

Small and me­di­um-sized mar­kets en­able growth

The Group grew its net sales by 0.7 per­cent to 3.744 bil­lion euros. Or­gan­ic growth – without cur­rency ef­fects – was 1.3 per­cent, CFO Dr Luc Schul­the­iss re­por­ted. “The hoped-for eco­nom­ic up­turn in the second half of the year failed to ma­ter­i­al­ize,” he said. Sales in all three of the Group’s ma­jor mar­kets – the USA, China and Ger­many – were sub­dued. This was off­set by the com­pany’s small and me­di­um-sized sales cen­ters.

In Europe, sales were down 0.9 per­cent, mainly as a res­ult of de­clin­ing num­bers in Ger­many. On the oth­er hand, vari­ous in­di­vidu­al mar­kets on the con­tin­ent, in­clud­ing Italy, France and the UK, per­formed well. Asia as a whole was down 1.9 per­cent – a res­ult of flag­ging sales in China. In­dia and Ja­pan, mean­while, de­livered good growth. 

In the Amer­icas, En­dress+Haus­er achieved a 4.2 per­cent in­crease in sales over­all, driv­en mainly by growth in Canada, Ar­gen­tina and Brazil. The USA was only a minor con­trib­ut­or to this pos­it­ive over­all per­form­ance des­pite hav­ing been a highly suc­cess­ful mar­ket for many years. Africa and the Middle East per­formed strongly, with growth of 13.3 per­cent.

World­wide net­work

En­dress+Haus­er in­ves­ted 349.3 mil­lion euros – more than in any oth­er year in its his­tory – in new build­ings, equip­ment and IT. The Group com­mis­sioned new pro­duc­tion fa­cil­it­ies at its cam­pus in Ch­hat­rapati Sambhajin­agar (formerly Aur­angabad), In­dia, ded­ic­ated a guest house in Ar­lesheim, Switzer­land, and opened re­gion­al lo­gist­ics hubs in China and In­dia. The com­pany is cur­rently im­ple­ment­ing in­vest­ment projects val­ued at over 550 mil­lion euros, the biggest of which is in Maul­burg, Ger­many. 

Sus­tain­able per­form­ance

Des­pite mak­ing large cap­it­al in­vest­ments and cre­at­ing ad­di­tion­al jobs, the Group main­tained profits at high levels, re­cord­ing net in­come of 407.9 mil­lion euros, only 0.2 per­cent down from the pri­or year. This cor­res­ponds to a 14.1 per­cent re­turn on sales. “Com­mer­cial suc­cess is the found­a­tion that al­lows us to fur­ther drive our com­pany’s sus­tain­ab­il­ity,” Dr Seld­ers em­phas­ized.

In the an­nu­al Eco­Vadis sus­tain­ab­il­ity bench­mark, En­dress+Haus­er scored 78 out of 100 points, its highest rat­ing ever. The Group has thus re­tained its Gold status, a pla­cing that puts it among the top 5 per­cent of the 130,000 or so rated com­pan­ies.

New fields of ap­plic­a­tion and fu­ture mar­kets

A stra­tegic part­ner­ship with sensor man­u­fac­turer SICK in pro­cess auto­ma­tion ex­pands the of­fer­ing in gas ana­lys­is and gas flow meas­ure­ment tech­no­logy. En­dress+Haus­er strives to sup­port its cus­tom­ers even bet­ter in in­creas­ing the ef­fi­ciency of their plants, pro­tect­ing the en­vir­on­ment and re­du­cing their car­bon foot­print. “En­dress+Haus­er is broad­en­ing its mar­ket base. We are cov­er­ing new fields of ap­plic­a­tion and tap­ping in­to fu­ture mar­kets,” said Su­per­vis­ory Board pres­id­ent Mat­thi­as Al­ten­dorf. About 800 sales and ser­vice em­ploy­ees have trans­ferred from SICK to En­dress+Haus­er un­der the part­ner­ship. Pro­duc­tion and fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of gas ana­lys­is and meas­ure­ment devices has been bundled un­der the um­brella of En­dress+Haus­er SICK GmbH+Co. KG, a 50/50 joint ven­ture between the two com­pan­ies that has around 730 em­ploy­ees across five loc­a­tions in Ger­many.

In the cur­rent we­bin­ar epis­ode “AI, Ro­bot­ics, and the Fu­ture of Smart Man­u­fac­tur­ing” Michele Rossi, In­dus­tri­al Auto­ma­tion In­dustry Dir­ect­or of Qt Group dis­cussed with ex­perts the chan­ging land­scape and trends tak­ing place in the in­dustry at the mo­ment. Guests were Daniele Bern­ardini, CEO of Cog­nivix, Przemysław Krzy­wania, HMI Dir­ect­or at Spyrosoft, Kai Hack­barth, Bosch Glob­al Di­git­al Solu­tions’ Head of Product and Solu­tions and Tommi Mänttäri, Seni­or Man­ager R&D of the Qt Group. 

As in­dus­tri­al auto­ma­tion ac­cel­er­ates, man­u­fac­tur­ers face the dual chal­lenge of in­nov­a­tion and se­cur­ity. The ex­perts ex­plore how AI, ro­bot­ics, and smart tech­no­lo­gies are trans­form­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing—while em­phas­iz­ing the im­port­ance of build­ing se­cure, re­si­li­ent sys­tems from the start.

In the we­bin­ar view­ers can learn about AI-powered ro­bot­ics and edge com­put­ing re­shap­ing smart man­u­fac­tur­ing, the role of mul­timod­al hu­man-ma­chine in­ter­faces (HMIs) in safer, more in­tu­it­ive col­lab­or­a­tion and the im­pact of evolving reg­u­la­tions like the AI Act and the Cy­ber Re­si­li­ence Act on in­dus­tri­al solu­tions. 

Gain ex­pert in­sights on the sig­ni­fic­ance of em­bod­ied AI and the chal­lenges of in­teg­rat­ing phys­ic­al AI in­to real-world en­vir­on­ments, stress­ing the im­port­ance of se­cure pro­gram­ming stand­ards and in­dustry stand­ard­iz­a­tion.

A re­cord­ing of the we­bin­ar is avail­able on the Qt web­site: ht­tps://www.qt.io/live-we­binars-and-events, to­geth­er with over­view and re­gis­tra­tion page for all events and we­binars.
 

Advanced materials underpin every facet of modern life - from metal alloys that support infrastructure to lithium-ion batteries powering electric vehicles. Despite their importance, traditional methods for designing these materials are slow, costly, and inefficient due to complex manufacturing processes.
Polaron is the first-ever winner of the Manchester Prize. Launched in 2023, the first year of the Manchester Prize called upon the innovators, academics, entrepreneurs, and disruptors in the UK to enter AI solutions that would deliver public good, receiving nearly 300 entries.

Polaron has developed state-of-the-art generative AI that leverages microstructural image data - showing the features of a material only visible under a microscope - to bridge the gap between the way materials are made and their performance. The technology empowers engineers to characterise materials, quantify microstructural variation, and optimise microstructural designs faster than ever before. Polaron has published scientific papers that demonstrate a more than 10% improvement in energy density of batteries is possible, roughly equivalent to adding 20 extra miles of range to a typical electric vehicle. 

Polaron was founded by Dr Isaac Squires, Dr Steve Kench and Dr Sam Cooper, spinning out their research at Imperial College London in November 2023. The growing start-up unites AI, engineering, and materials science, paving the way for material innovations in batteries and beyond.
Its AI models can explore thousands of material designs in under a day - a task that would take current state-of-the-art physics-based simulations around 50 years. 

What the Polaron model can explore in a matter of seconds, takes simulations 12-48 hours. Therefore, exploring 20,000 variations would take Polaron’s models around 1 day, and simulations around 50 years. SOURCE: Kench S et al (4 December 2024), Li-ion battery design through microstructural optimization using generative AI, Matter, Volume 7, Issue 12, pp. 4260-4269. Available at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590238524004466

Dr Isaac Squires, CEO of Polaron, winner of the first Manchester Prize, said: “We are thrilled to have won the first ever Manchester Prize - it has been an extraordinary team effort. In the last year, we have turned the research we pursued at Imperial College London into a commercial product, using our AI to reduce years of materials development into a matter of days. We are now working with our first customers in the battery manufacturing sector to apply Polaron to improve the performance of EVs by extending range and reducing charge times. While this has been our core market to date, Polaron is material agnostic, and we are already bringing our rapid design capabilities to industrial manufacturing more widely, including alloys, composites and catalysts.”

About the first Manchester Prize 

The Manchester Prize is a multi-million-pound, multi-year challenge prize from the UK’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to reward UK-led breakthroughs in artificial intelligence for public good. It is rewarding innovations that will help to transform the lives of the people across the UK and continue to secure the UK’s place as a global leader in cutting edge innovation. In its first year, the Manchester Prize sought innovations from UK-led teams that overcome challenges in the fields of energy, environment and infrastructure. 

Feryal Clark, Minister for AI said: “The Manchester Prize shows how we’re putting AI to work for people all over the country – supporting breakthroughs and innovations which will unlock so much positive change in our lives.” 
Nick Jennings, chair of the judging panel for the Manchester Prize and Vice-Chancellor of Loughborough University, added: “Choosing a winner of the inaugural Manchester Prize was an incredibly tough decision. Polaron stood out because of its highly innovative approach to revolutionising a process that will unlock a multitude of possibilities for industry. Advanced materials play an extraordinarily important role across our lives; Polaron’s capacity to transform the pace of materials research and development is truly exciting and is a great example of AI being used for social good.”
 

manchesterprize.org

Hav­ing at­ten­ded European shows in the broad­er fact­ory auto­ma­tion en­vir­on­ment since I joined a B-2-B pub­lish­ing com­pany in the sum­mer of 2006, this week has opened a new chapter in my ca­reer. I trav­elled to Guang­zhou, China to at­tend the 137th Can­ton Fair as ed­it­or of IEN Europe. With its 55 ex­hib­i­tion sec­tions and 172 product zones, this is the most ho­ri­zont­al event I have at­ten­ded in my pro­fes­sion­al life; even the Han­nov­er Messe, one of Europe's ma­jor spring events each year, has a fairly ver­tic­al se­lec­tion of in­dus­tries com­pared to this. Cer­tainly one of the first things you no­tice is the high level of in­ter­na­tion­al­isa­tion, with buy­ers from more than 210 coun­tries and re­gions.

China's in­dus­tri­al in­nov­a­tions in bat­ter­ies, photo­vol­ta­ics, di­git­al tech­no­lo­gies and in­tel­li­gent man­u­fac­tur­ing are rep­res­en­ted with a fo­cus on ad­vanced tech­no­lo­gies and green solu­tions.

One of the new high­lights of the show is the Ser­vice Ro­bots Zone, which show­cases the latest de­vel­op­ments and in­nov­a­tions. From man­u­fac­tur­ers of joints and grip­pers that work like a hu­man hand, to co­bots and mo­bile ro­bot units for the ag­ri­cul­tur­al in­dustry, har­vest­ing fruit or ve­get­ables such as to­ma­toes, they are all there. And that is not all. You can also find in­nov­at­ive designs for sur­veil­lance and de­tec­tion, used for mon­it­or­ing tasks in haz­ard­ous in­dus­tri­al areas, or for find­ing and res­cuing people in a fire zone or after a nat­ur­al dis­aster.

An­oth­er trend you can see, as at the European events, is that ro­bots are be­com­ing hu­manoid. When it comes to ser­vice and hu­man-ma­chine in­ter­ac­tion, these design fea­tures clearly make sense, as they al­low people to in­ter­act with a friend­li­er-look­ing ma­chine. The be­ne­fits in in­dus­tri­al and man­u­fac­tur­ing en­vir­on­ments re­main to be proven. However, a few years ago, nobody would have thought that a 20-inch multi-touch in­ter­face would be the way to go for ma­chine op­er­a­tion, and you know what cus­tom­ers are de­mand­ing in terms of HMIs today.

With the grow­ing in­vest­ment in China's ro­bot­ics sec­tor over the next 10 years, the size and ver­sat­il­ity of the Ser­vice Ro­bot Zone at the show will cer­tainly grow to the next level. I really hope to come back in the com­ing years to see this trans­form­a­tion and in­nov­at­ive ideas live and in ac­tion.
 

Altair wel­comes MAIT Group as a new chan­nel part­ner. With­in the part­ner­ship, MAIT will of­fer Altair’s lead­ing sim­u­la­tion solu­tions throughout the DACH, BE­NE­LUX and Liecht­en­stein Re­gions. 

"MAIT of­fers solu­tions that span the en­tire product li­fe­cycle, from de­vel­op­ment to man­u­fac­tur­ing right through to ser­vices. With this com­pre­hens­ive port­fo­lio, they are an ex­cel­lent ad­di­tion to the Altair part­ner eco­sys­tem,” said Ki­mon Af­sar­id­is, vice pres­id­ent of in­dir­ect sales EMEA and man­aging dir­ect­or – East­ern Europe, Altair. “Fo­cused on the ma­chinery, aerospace, and health­care in­dus­tries, MAIT de­liv­ers in­nov­at­ive di­git­al solu­tions to their cus­tom­ers. In ad­di­tion to their com­ple­ment­ary of­fer­ings, they share a sim­il­ar com­pany cul­ture to ours, driv­en by pas­sion­ate people and a deep ex­pert­ise in the in­dus­tries they serve. With this part­ner­ship all signs point to growth in the DACH re­gion, where to­geth­er we will provide cus­tom­ers with full sup­port and high-value products tailored to their needs.”

Soft­ware for crit­ic­al busi­ness areas

"This agree­ment with Altair sig­ni­fic­antly broadens our sim­u­la­tion port­fo­lio," said Stefan Niehus­mann, CEO, MAIT-Group. "We re­main ded­ic­ated to provid­ing cut­ting-edge solu­tions to our cus­tom­ers across the in­dus­tries we serve. With Altair's of­fer­ings, our cus­tom­ers now have ac­cess to a com­pre­hens­ive range of cap­ab­il­it­ies - from struc­tur­al sim­u­la­tion and elec­tro­mag­net­ics to data ana­lyt­ics. They can be­ne­fit from faster de­cision-mak­ing, AI-powered sim­u­la­tion tools, and ac­cel­er­ated time-to-mar­ket for their products." 

MAIT Group provides in­nov­at­ive di­git­al solu­tions in product li­fe­cycle man­age­ment, en­ter­prise re­source plan­ning and Cloud- and man­aged ser­vices. With its three busi­ness di­vi­sions, ERP, PLM and IT, MAIT is a hol­ist­ic and long-term solu­tion pro­vider in all its over 7000 cus­tom­ers' crit­ic­al busi­ness areas. MAIT (a neo­lo­gism made up of "mate" for part­ner, "IT" and "AI" for ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence) gen­er­ates sales of ~ €200 mil­lion and im­ple­ments, with its 900 em­ploy­ees, spe­cif­ic solu­tions in close co­oper­a­tion with their cus­tom­ers at more than 25 loc­a­tions in Ger­many, Aus­tria, Switzer­land and Be­ne­lux. 
 

ABB an­nounced a pro­cess to pro­pose to its An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing 2026 to de­cide on a 100 per­cent spin-off of its Ro­bot­ics di­vi­sion. The in­ten­tion is for the busi­ness to start trad­ing as a sep­ar­ately lis­ted com­pany dur­ing the second quarter of 2026.

Peter Voser, Chair­man of ABB, said: “The board be­lieves list­ing ABB Ro­bot­ics as a sep­ar­ate com­pany will op­tim­ize both com­pan­ies’ abil­ity to cre­ate cus­tom­er value, grow and at­tract tal­ent. Both com­pan­ies will be­ne­fit from a more fo­cused gov­ernance and cap­it­al al­loc­a­tion. ABB will con­tin­ue to fo­cus on its long-term strategy, build­ing on its lead­ing po­s­i­tions in elec­tri­fic­a­tion and auto­ma­tion.”

ABB Ro­bot­ics provides in­tel­li­gent auto­ma­tion solu­tions to its glob­al cus­tom­er base.  Cus­tom­er value is cre­ated through the dif­fer­en­ti­ated of­fer­ing of the broad­est ro­bot­ics plat­forms, in­clud­ing Autonom­ous Mo­bile Ro­bots, soft­ware and AI com­bined with proven do­main ex­pert­ise to a broad range of tra­di­tion­al and new in­dustry seg­ments. More than 80 per­cent of the of­fer­ing is soft­ware/AI en­abled.

Morten Wi­erod, CEO of ABB, ad­ded: “ABB Ro­bot­ics is a lead­er in its in­dustry and there are lim­ited busi­ness and tech­no­logy syn­er­gies between the ABB Ro­bot­ics busi­ness and the re­mainder of ABB di­vi­sions, with dif­fer­ent de­mand and mar­ket char­ac­ter­ist­ics. We be­lieve this change will sup­port value cre­ation in both the ABB Group and in the sep­ar­ately lis­ted pure play ro­bot­ics busi­ness.”

The ABB Ro­bot­ics di­vi­sion has ap­prox­im­ately 7,000 em­ploy­ees. With 2024 rev­en­ues of $2.3 bil­lion it rep­res­en­ted about 7 per­cent of ABB Group rev­en­ues and had an Op­er­a­tion­al EBITA mar­gin of 12.1 per­cent.

If share­hold­ers de­cide in fa­vor of the pro­pos­al, the spin-off is planned to be done through a share dis­tri­bu­tion, whereby ABB Ltd.’s share­hold­ers will re­ceive shares in the com­pany to be lis­ted (work­ing name “ABB Ro­bot­ics”) as a di­vidend in-kind in pro­por­tion to their ex­ist­ing share­hold­ing.
 

Both will ini­tially re­main with the fam­ily share­hold­ers of Pep­perl+Fuchs in an ad­vis­ory ca­pa­city. They will be suc­ceeded by Dr. Wil­helm Nehring as the new CEO and Mar­tin Wal­ter as the new CFO – a de­lib­er­ate and long-planned re­ju­ven­a­tion to act­ively shape the fu­ture of the com­pany. Both will take up their du­ties on May 1, 2025. 

Dr. Wil­helm Nehring most re­cently served as CEO of a mech­an­ic­al en­gin­eer­ing com­pany, and pre­vi­ously held seni­or lead­er­ship po­s­i­tions in the elec­tric­al in­dustry. Mar­tin Wal­ter was formerly Seni­or Vice Pres­id­ent of Con­trolling & Ac­count­ing at a glob­ally act­ive Ger­man in­dus­tri­al com­pany. Both have built im­press­ive ca­reers and bring fresh per­spect­ives and new im­pulses to Pep­perl+Fuchs' lead­er­ship, which the Man­nheim-based com­pany seeks to lever­age for its con­tin­ued suc­cess. The en­tire ex­ec­ut­ive board is con­vinced that the ex­pert­ise, stra­tegic mind­set, and in­nov­at­ive ap­proaches of Dr. Wil­helm Nehring and Mar­tin Wal­ter will en­rich Pep­perl+Fuchs with fresh ideas and a mod­ern lead­er­ship cul­ture, bridging the sig­ni­fic­ant gap left by Dr.-Ing. Gun­ther Kegel and Wern­er Guth­i­er.

"After more than 30 years of re­spons­ib­il­ity for this com­pany, it is nat­ur­ally not easy to let go of the reins. One does not want to leave the role without know­ing that a suc­cessor will con­tin­ue the task with just as much pas­sion. However, I am ab­so­lutely con­fid­ent in Dr. Wil­helm Nehring and Mar­tin Wal­ter: they have great po­ten­tial and also pos­sess the spir­it and vis­ion needed to lead Pep­perl+Fuchs in­to a suc­cess­ful fu­ture. They will do a fant­ast­ic job!" said Dr.-Ing. Gun­ther Kegel. To­geth­er with the fam­ily share­hold­ers and CHRO Flori­an Ochs, he has care­fully pre­pared this trans­ition over an ex­ten­ded peri­od to en­sure the com­pany’s con­tinu­ity and sta­bil­ity.

With this gen­er­a­tion­al change, Pep­perl+Fuchs is send­ing a clear sig­nal for the fu­ture: The new ex­ec­ut­ive lead­er­ship will con­tin­ue the com­pany’s suc­cess­ful tra­ject­ory while also ex­plor­ing in­nov­at­ive paths to en­sure long-term growth

In the face of grow­ing cy­ber­se­cur­ity threats and tight­en­ing reg­u­la­tions such as the EU Cy­ber Re­si­li­ence Act (CRA), ma­chine build­ers must re­think the role of in­dus­tri­al net­work devices. Cy­ber­se­cur­ity is no longer just a fea­ture. It is a pre­requis­ite for mar­ket ac­cess, op­er­a­tion­al con­tinu­ity, and brand repu­ta­tion. IEC 62443-4-2 cer­ti­fied devices are emer­ging as key en­a­blers in this new land­scape. They not only sup­port com­pli­ance with evolving reg­u­lat­ory frame­works but also sim­pli­fy cer­ti­fic­a­tion ef­forts, re­duce in­teg­ra­tion risks, and pro­mote long-term ef­fi­ciency.

This art­icle ex­plores how IEC 62443-4-2 cer­ti­fied com­pon­ents con­trib­ute to harden­ing ma­chines, sup­port CE/UKCA cer­ti­fic­a­tion pro­cesses (i.e., CE mark­ing for the European mar­ket and UKCA mark­ing for Great Bri­tain, which con­firm that products meet safety and per­form­ance stand­ards), and of­fer a fu­ture­proof path to CRA com­pli­ance.

IEC 62443-4-2: A prac­tic­al path to harden­ing ma­chines

IEC 62443-4-2 defines cy­ber­se­cur­ity re­quire­ments for in­di­vidu­al com­pon­ents such as routers, switches, pro­tocol con­vert­ers, ac­cess points, in­dus­tri­al com­puters, and more. Cer­ti­fied devices meet­ing Se­cur­ity Level 2 (SL2) provide ro­bust pro­tec­tion against in­ten­tion­al mis­use by at­tack­ers pos­sess­ing mod­er­ate re­sources and skills. This level aligns well with the threat mod­els most ma­chine build­ers face in real-world in­dus­tri­al set­tings.

For ma­chine build­ers align­ing their sys­tems with IEC 62443-3-3, which fo­cuses on sys­tem-level se­cur­ity re­quire­ments, in­teg­rat­ing cer­ti­fied com­pon­ents be­comes a stra­tegic short­cut. Each IEC 62443-4-2 cer­ti­fied com­pon­ent brings pre­defined cap­ab­il­it­ies that ful­fil key sys­tem-level re­quire­ments, sim­pli­fy­ing the build­er's path to com­pli­ance.

Us­ing cer­ti­fied com­pon­ents means a ma­chine is built on a known, tested, and in­de­pend­ently veri­fied se­cur­ity found­a­tion. Each cer­ti­fied device brings cap­ab­il­it­ies like au­then­tic­a­tion, ac­cess con­trol, se­cure boot, signed firm­ware, en­cryp­ted com­mu­nic­a­tion, and more. The ad­vant­age ex­tends bey­ond the product. It hardens the ma­chine it­self, stream­lines audits, and sup­ports third-party sys­tem cer­ti­fic­a­tion ef­forts.

Even when us­ing non-cer­ti­fied ver­sions, the be­ne­fits are tan­gible. All Moxa products are de­veloped un­der an IEC 62443-4-1 cer­ti­fied pro­cess, mean­ing the el­ev­ated se­cur­ity baseline ap­plies across the en­tire port­fo­lio. Cer­ti­fied com­pon­ents up­lift the over­all eco­sys­tem by en­for­cing bet­ter design prac­tices, con­sist­ent patch­ing routines, and struc­tured re­sponse pro­to­cols.

Go­ing bey­ond com­pli­ance: Built-in fea­tures that de­liv­er real value

IEC 62443-4-2 com­pli­ance tran­scends mere la­belling; it em­bod­ies a design philo­sophy that pri­or­it­izes se­cur­ity. Key fea­tures in­clude:

• Routers and Wire­less Ac­cess Points: Equipped with em­bed­ded fire­walls and in­teg­rated IDS/IPS with Deep Pack­et In­spec­tion (DPI) to de­tect an­om­alies in in­dus­tri­al pro­to­cols.
• NAT Func­tion­al­ity: Sup­ports net­work seg­ment­a­tion and con­ceals in­tern­al IP struc­tures, re­du­cing the at­tack sur­face.
• Seri­al Device Serv­ers: Provide en­cryp­ted com­mu­nic­a­tion for leg­acy equip­ment, im­prov­ing pro­tocol se­cur­ity without re­quir­ing com­plete in­fra­struc­ture up­grades.
• Pro­tocol Con­vert­ers: Not only bridge old and new sys­tems se­curely but also pro­tect against pro­tocol ab­use by veri­fy­ing and con­trolling data ex­changes between dif­fer­ing stand­ards.
• Man­aged Switches: En­able gran­u­lar traffic con­trol, log­ging, and ac­cess policies fea­tures that un­man­aged switches lack but are in­creas­ingly ne­ces­sary for com­pli­ance and audit read­i­ness.
   

A good ex­ample is the use of IEC 62443-4-2 SL2 cer­ti­fied ARM-based in­dus­tri­al com­puters, which provide a se­cure found­a­tion for soft­ware in­teg­ra­tion. Such plat­forms help cus­tom­ers align with se­cur­ity-by-design prin­ciples. Moreover, policies such as "up­date without up­grade" en­sure that the cer­ti­fic­a­tion status re­mains in­tact over time, avoid­ing un­ex­pec­ted re­val­id­a­tion work.

To il­lus­trate the prac­tic­al be­ne­fits of cer­ti­fied com­pon­ents, con­sider the fol­low­ing scen­ari­os.

In a typ­ic­al auto­mot­ive man­u­fac­tur­ing en­vir­on­ment, in­teg­rat­ing Moxa’s IEC 62443-4-2 SL2 cer­ti­fied in­dus­tri­al se­cure routers, such as the EDR-G9010 and TN-4900 Series, can help strengthen cy­ber­se­cur­ity across auto­mated as­sembly lines. These devices of­fer strong pro­tec­tion against cy­ber threats while sup­port­ing CE and UKCA cer­ti­fic­a­tion pro­cesses. By us­ing cer­ti­fied com­pon­ents from the out­set, man­u­fac­tur­ers can re­duce in­teg­ra­tion risks and im­prove op­er­a­tion­al ef­fi­ciency, all while align­ing with reg­u­lat­ory re­quire­ments.

Sim­il­arly, in a rep­res­ent­at­ive in­dus­tri­al auto­ma­tion setup, de­ploy­ing IEC 62443-4-2 cer­ti­fied Eth­er­net switches, like Moxa’s EDS-4000/G4000 Series, en­able bet­ter net­work vis­ib­il­ity, traffic con­trol, and ac­cess policy en­force­ment. These cap­ab­il­it­ies are in­creas­ingly im­port­ant for meet­ing the tech­nic­al and doc­u­ment­a­tion stand­ards re­quired by the Cy­ber Re­si­li­ence Act and oth­er in­dustry reg­u­la­tions.

Ma­chine build­ers us­ing un­man­aged switches should mi­grate to man­aged and cer­ti­fied op­tions for en­hanced se­cur­ity. Great­er vis­ib­il­ity, policy en­force­ment, and trace­ab­il­ity help meet CRA and oth­er reg­u­lat­ory re­quire­ments that de­mand doc­u­ment­a­tion and in­cid­ent re­sponse cap­ab­il­ity. Ma­chine build­ers us­ing un­man­aged switches should mi­grate to man­aged and cer­ti­fied op­tions for en­hanced se­cur­ity. Great­er vis­ib­il­ity, policy en­force­ment, and trace­ab­il­ity help meet CRA and oth­er reg­u­lat­ory re­quire­ments that de­mand doc­u­ment­a­tion and in­cid­ent re­sponse cap­ab­il­ity.

Se­cur­ity built in­to the or­gan­iz­a­tion: Long-term CRA read­i­ness

IEC 62443-4-1 cer­ti­fic­a­tion en­sures the im­ple­ment­a­tion of se­cure de­vel­op­ment pro­cesses. This is par­tic­u­larly im­port­ant for CRA com­pli­ance, which man­dates long-term sup­port, vul­ner­ab­il­ity man­age­ment, and trans­par­ency.

In the con­text of the CRA, ma­chine build­ers must also en­sure the se­cur­ity of their sup­ply chains. This el­ev­ates the im­port­ance of choos­ing sup­pli­ers who are IEC 62443-4-1 cer­ti­fied en­sur­ing that com­pon­ents are de­veloped, main­tained, and sup­por­ted un­der a ma­ture se­cur­ity frame­work.

Key be­ne­fits in­clude:

• Struc­tured patch­ing and vul­ner­ab­il­ity man­age­ment pro­ced­ures.
• An act­ive Product Se­cur­ity In­cid­ent Re­sponse Team (PSIRT).
• Avail­ab­il­ity of Soft­ware Bills of Ma­ter­i­als (SBOMs), which al­low ma­chine build­ers to identi­fy and track known vul­ner­ab­il­it­ies in third-party com­pon­ents is crit­ic­al for risk as­sess­ment and com­pli­ance.
• Sup­pli­er trans­par­ency and trace­ab­il­ity throughout the product li­fe­cycle, as re­quired by the CRA.
   

Look­ing ahead: Cer­ti­fic­a­tion as a busi­ness en­a­bler

IEC 62443-4-2 cer­ti­fic­a­tion isn't just for com­pon­ent man­u­fac­tur­ers. Ma­chine build­ers can also seek cer­ti­fic­a­tion for their own sys­tems. By start­ing with already-cer­ti­fied com­pon­ents, the over­all scope of test­ing and doc­u­ment­a­tion can be re­duced sig­ni­fic­antly. More im­port­antly, CRA en­force­ment is ex­pec­ted to be strict. Com­pli­ance may soon de­term­ine who can sell in the European mar­ket and who can­not.

Cer­ti­fic­a­tion tran­scends risk avoid­ance, serving as a sig­ni­fic­ant mar­ket ad­vant­age. Choos­ing sup­pli­ers and tech­no­lo­gies that are already com­pli­ant sim­pli­fies the jour­ney and re­duces long-term op­er­a­tion­al costs.

Con­clu­sion: Build­ing com­pli­ance and re­si­li­ence from the ground up

Cer­ti­fied se­cur­ity com­pon­ents stream­line ma­chine cer­ti­fic­a­tion, bol­ster op­er­a­tion­al re­si­li­ence, and equip or­gan­iz­a­tions to meet evolving cy­ber­se­cur­ity reg­u­la­tions. Ad­opt­ing IEC 62443-4-2 cer­ti­fied devices, wheth­er switches, routers, pro­tocol gate­ways, or in­dus­tri­al PCs, sup­port a struc­tured, audit-ready ap­proach to cy­ber­se­cur­ity. Vendors that also fol­low cer­ti­fied de­vel­op­ment li­fe­cycles and main­tain a ro­bust PSIRT of­fer the ad­ded be­ne­fit of post-sale trans­par­ency and sup­port, both of which are key ten­ets of the Cy­ber Re­si­li­ence Act.

Moxa, for ex­ample, of­fers the largest IEC 62443-4-2 SL2 cer­ti­fied port­fo­lio on the mar­ket, which in­cludes routers, switches, seri­al serv­ers, pro­tocol con­vert­ers, ac­cess points, and com­puters. All products are de­veloped un­der an IEC 62443-4-1 cer­ti­fied pro­cess, en­sur­ing con­sist­ent se­cure de­vel­op­ment prac­tices. Moxa’s Product Se­cur­ity In­cid­ent Re­sponse Team (PSIRT) is es­pe­cially ma­ture, and as a CVE Num­ber­ing Au­thor­ity (CNA), the com­pany plays a re­cog­nized role in the glob­al cy­ber­se­cur­ity eco­sys­tem. This makes Moxa an ideal part­ner for ma­chine build­ers aim­ing to build se­cure, cer­ti­fi­able, and fu­ture­proof in­dus­tri­al sys­tems.
 

New­castle-based Pro­jec­ted Im­age provide LED pro­ject­ors that cast bright, hard-to-ig­nore health and safety signs onto any sur­face. 

To help even more busi­nesses sim­pli­fy their health and safety sig­nage, Pro­jec­ted Im­age have launched a cut­ting-edge tool which en­ables users to view pro­jec­ted sig­nage solu­tions in a fully im­mers­ive vir­tu­al 3D en­vir­on­ment.

“Safety is para­mount in so many in­dus­tries, but ac­tu­ally visu­al­ising how pro­jec­ted safety sig­nage in­teg­rates in­to an ex­ist­ing work­space can be a chal­lenge without an on-site demo. Our new in­ter­act­ive mod­el gives com­pan­ies the abil­ity to vir­tu­ally plan, test and per­fect their sig­nage be­fore im­ple­ment­ing it in real life, sav­ing both time and re­sources" says Ian Spoors, Man­aging Dir­ect­or of Pro­jec­ted Im­age. 

Demon­strat­ing dif­fer­ent con­di­tions

De­signed to dis­rupt out­dated in­dustry norms, the mod­el is a browser-nat­ive ex­per­i­ence which uses mod­ern web ren­der­ing tech­no­lo­gies to de­liv­er pro­jec­ted safety sig­nage in an in­ter­act­ive, 3D en­vir­on­ment, re­quir­ing no plu­gins and no down­loads for in­stant ac­cess. Built and op­tim­ised with per­form­ance-first prin­ciples, users can seam­lessly nav­ig­ate, pan and zoom through a ware­house sim­u­la­tion, ex­plor­ing Pro­jec­ted Im­age’s sig­nage solu­tions un­der dy­nam­ic con­di­tions. 

The mod­el can also demon­strate how sig­nage will look un­der vari­ous light­ing con­di­tions and in re­la­tion to obstacles and haz­ards that can be present in real life scen­ari­os. The pro­jec­ted sig­nage ex­perts also say that the mod­el is easy to use – with an in­ter­act­ive in­ter­face suit­able for all tech­nic­al pro­fi­cien­cies. Users can toggle between dif­fer­ent sig­nage sys­tems, designs and light­ing ef­fects to ad­dress spe­cif­ic safety chal­lenges and un­der­stand how the products work in ac­tion.
 

As part of its com­mit­ment to in­dus­tri­al safety and ac­cess guard­ing, SICK has un­veiled its power­ful new DMM4 mut­ing mod­ule. The DMM4 meets a wide range of mut­ing needs and is highly re­li­able, flex­ible and con­fig­ur­able to de­liv­er en­hanced in­dus­tri­al safety without com­prom­ising pro­ductiv­ity.

The DMM4 ex­ten­sion mod­ule rep­res­ents the latest evol­u­tion in SICK’s safety solu­tions. It makes sure op­er­at­ors stay pro­tec­ted from haz­ard­ous ma­chinery while ma­ter­i­als, boxes and fin­ished products move through smoothly. A ro­bust, in-the-field solu­tion with a host of new fea­tures and be­ne­fits, the DMM4 is fully com­pat­ible with SICK’s de­Tec safety light cur­tains and de­Tem safety light-beam sensors for seam­less pro­tec­tion and ef­fi­ciency with easy in­stall­a­tion.

En­hanced safety and ef­fi­cient ma­ter­i­al flow

Mut­ing is a meth­od that has been around a long time and has de­veloped to be­come more ver­sat­ile. Mod­ern man­u­fac­tur­ing re­quires safe pas­sage of goods between pro­duc­tion pro­cesses and this is in­creas­ingly im­port­ant as pro­duc­tion be­comes more com­plex. A stan­dalone mut­ing mod­ule of­fers high flex­ib­il­ity and safety for free-flow­ing pro­duc­tion and the DMM4 has a small foot­print.

The ro­bust mut­ing mod­ule is de­signed to per­form in the field and can be eas­ily in­teg­rated. It doesn’t re­quire a sep­ar­ate cab­in­et as it is equipped with pro­tec­tion against dust and wa­ter in the field, re­du­cing wir­ing and com­mis­sion­ing time. A ded­ic­ated mut­ing mod­ule with a high IP rat­ing, it can be used in safety func­tion up to PLe (ISO 13849)/SIL3 (IEC 62061) and fully sup­ports com­pli­ance with ISO 13855, the stand­ard cov­er­ing the re­quire­ments of po­s­i­tion­ing safe­guards with re­spect to the ap­proach of the hu­man body. The DMM4 is a more power­ful, slim­mer ex­ten­sion mod­ule than pre­vi­ous ver­sions and SICK has re­leased ro­bust new sup­port columns with mi­cro ad­just­ment cap­ab­il­it­ies and a built-in spir­it level to com­ple­ment it. 

Ap­plic­a­tions for the DMM4 mut­ing mod­ule range from lo­gist­ics (e.g. mut­ing for AGVs, elec­tric fork­lifts or AM­Rs), to man­u­fac­tur­ing (from large auto­mot­ive parts to small con­sumer goods, food & bever­age, and pharma).

Mar­tin Kid­man, SICK Man­ager – Safety (S&W Europe), says: “Highly flex­ible and con­fig­ur­able, the SICK DMM4 is out of the box cer­ti­fied and Plug and Play, with easy in­stall­a­tion and con­nectiv­ity with the SICK de­Tec safety light cur­tain. It’s part of a com­plete range of SICK safety light cur­tain products, in­clud­ing light cur­tains, sensors, fit­tings and mut­ing mod­ules. 
 

Data­Talk, the ver­sat­ile no-code plat­form fo­cused on op­er­a­tion­al and man­u­fac­tur­ing ef­fi­ciency is pleased to an­nounce the launch of its latest product, AI Alarm & No­ti­fy, de­signed for in­tel­li­gent real-time mon­it­or­ing and no­ti­fic­a­tion. This solu­tion seam­lessly in­teg­rates with ex­ist­ing devices and in­stantly alerts users to any dis­crep­an­cies through mul­tiple com­mu­nic­a­tion chan­nels such as email, What­s­App, Dis­cord or Slack.

De­signed to en­hance op­er­a­tion­al ef­fi­ciency and safety, this ad­vanced AI-powered no­ti­fic­a­tion plat­form lever­ages ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence to provide end users with a soph­ist­ic­ated AI as­sist­ant. This AI sys­tem provides real-time in­sights, re­duces alarm fa­tigue, and sup­ports in­dus­tri­al op­er­at­ors in ana­lyz­ing situ­ations, pre­dict­ing po­ten­tial is­sues, and mak­ing pro­act­ive, well-in­formed de­cisions that en­hance ef­fi­ciency and re­li­ab­il­ity.

Data pro­cessing from mul­tiple sources 

The sys­tem can pro­cess data from PLCs, II­oT sensors, MQTT, data­bases, and oth­er sources, en­abling com­pre­hens­ive mon­it­or­ing of tech­no­lo­gic­al pro­cesses. The graph­ic­al no-code com­put­ing mod­ule al­lows users to com­bine and trans­form data without the need for pro­gram­ming, sim­pli­fy­ing sys­tem con­fig­ur­a­tion and man­age­ment. The sys­tem al­lows for the setup of hier­arch­ies and cus­tom fil­ters, en­sur­ing in­form­a­tion to reach the right people at the right time. With the AI Bot Talk­ie fea­ture, users can dir­ectly in­ter­act with their sys­tem, gain­ing in­stant in­sights and solu­tions—equi­val­ent to ex­pert su­per­vi­sion 24/7. The more in­form­a­tion the AI Bot gets, the more help­ful it is. AI Alarm & No­ti­fy is fully com­pat­ible with SCADA and MES sys­tems, al­low­ing for seam­less in­teg­ra­tion in­to ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­tures.

New data from Armis Labs’ third annual global Cyberwarfare report, Warfare Without Borders: AI’s Role in The New Age of Cyberwarfare, shows the threat of AI has increased for organizations and governments worldwide in the past year. Nearly three-quarters (73%) of IT decision-makers globally express concern about nation-state actors using AI to develop more sophisticated and targeted cyberattacks.

“AI is enabling nation-state actors to stealthily evolve their tactics to commit acts of cyberwarfare at any given moment,” said Nadir Izrael, CTO and Co-Founder of Armis. “At the same time, threats are emerging at overwhelming rates from smaller nations and non-state actors leveraging AI to elevate to near-peer cyber threats. It is imperative that cybersecurity leaders shift their programs left of boom, enabling them to stop cyberattacks capable of crippling their operations before there’s any impact to their organization.”

81% of IT leaders say moving to a proactive cybersecurity posture is a top goal for their organization in the year ahead but nearly 3 in 5 (58%) organizations admit that they currently only respond to threats as they occur, or after the damage has already been done.

Staying ahead of threats 

Market consolidation, complex regulatory landscapes and gaps in legacy security tool stacks have challenged organizations’ abilities to stay ahead of threats. While many wish to implement AI-driven cybersecurity tools in a proactive defense move, half of IT decision-makers surveyed acknowledge their teams lack the necessary expertise to implement and manage the technology.

“Current industry dynamics create an appealing environment for malicious actors to intensify their efforts through automated AI offensive driven technologies,” said Michael Freeman, Head of Threat Intelligence at Armis. “Organizations that leverage proven AI security solutions will realize a greater impact in their ability to equip their teams with the resources and time they need to anticipate the tactics that could be used against them and harden their environments in response. Embracing a more proactive approach to threats has never been more important, and closing that divide between intention and ample preparation is within reach thanks to significant advancements in cyber exposure management.”

Additional key global findings from this year’s report include:

• 85% of IT decision-makers confirm that offensive techniques regularly bypass their security tools.
• Only 53% of IT leaders believe that their government can defend its citizens and organizations against an act of cyberwarfare, while just 33% strongly agree that their own organization is prepared to handle a cyberwarfare attack and respond to related threats.
• Across the globe, IT decision-makers consistently point to three dominant state-sponsored threats: Russia (73%), China (73%) and North Korea (40%).
• 72% of IT leaders believe that the cyber capabilities of nation-state actors have the potential to trigger a full-scale cyberwar, with devastating consequences for global critical infrastructure.
• Three-quarters (75%) of IT decision-makers believe cyberwarfare attacks will increasingly target institutions representing free press and independent thought – a sharp rise from last year’s 42%.
   

The 2025 Armis Cyberwarfare Report is based on a study of over 1,800 global IT decision-makers and proprietary data from Armis Labs. Read the full report from Armis, including a comprehensive breakdown of the findings for each region of respondents and IT decision-makers from different verticals here: https://www.armis.com/cyberwarfare-2024/ 
 

Mur­relektronik sim­pli­fies in­dus­tri­al auto­ma­tion with smart, seam­less and cost-ef­fect­ive solu­tions. The MVK fu­sion field­bus mod­ules are a good ex­ample of this. These hy­brid mod­ules unite three ele­ment­ary func­tions of in­stall­a­tion tech­no­logy: dis­crete I/O, safety I/O, and IO-Link. The com­bin­a­tion of stand­ard and safety com­mu­nic­a­tion in­to one device stream­lines sys­tem ar­chi­tec­ture and makes in­stall­a­tion sig­ni­fic­antly easi­er and faster. This ap­proach means that ma­chine build­ers and sys­tem in­teg­rat­ors need few­er field­bus mod­ules per mod­u­lar unit, ideally only one – which greatly re­duces in­stall­a­tion ef­fort and saves valu­able space.

3-in-1 mod­ule 

Mur­relektronik adds a new mem­ber to the MVK Fu­sion fam­ily: MVK Fu­sion CIP Safety. As the name sug­gests, it util­izes the "Com­mon In­dus­tri­al Pro­tocol Safety" – or CIP Safety for short. This means that ma­chine build­ers and sys­tem in­teg­rat­ors can now also use this pop­u­lar 3-in-1 ap­proach and its many ad­vant­ages for Eth­er­Net/IP ap­plic­a­tions. CIP Safety is a cer­ti­fied ex­ten­sion of the widely used CIP pro­tocol (IEC 61508) that en­ables the safe trans­mis­sion of data in real time – without the need for sep­ar­ate safety net­works. The new device sup­ports this func­tion­al­ity, help­ing en­gin­eers eas­ily in­teg­rate safety in­to both new and ex­ist­ing Eth­er­net/IP sys­tems.

The device fea­tures ro­bust M12 L-coded power con­nect­ors, mak­ing it ideal for space-con­strained in­stall­a­tions. In ad­di­tion to their com­pact form factor, these con­nect­ors of­fer high cur­rent ca­pa­city, re­li­ab­il­ity and proven cod­ing.

Sim­pli­fied con­fig­ur­a­tion
 
The new hy­brid safety mod­ules for Eth­er­Net/IP also sim­pli­fy the con­fig­ur­a­tion of safety-re­lated sensors and ac­tu­at­ors. Con­fig­ur­a­tion is handled dir­ectly through the con­trol­ler's en­gin­eer­ing soft­ware. This means that no ex­tern­al tools are needed to trans­fer the Safety Net­work Num­ber (SNN) or device set­tings, min­im­iz­ing setup time and re­du­cing er­rors. The safety out­put on Port X3 provides un­matched flex­ib­il­ity. It can be con­figured as two sourcing out­puts, one bi­polar out­put, or a com­bin­a­tion of both. 

Each port of­fers chan­nel-spe­cif­ic cus­tom­iz­a­tion to suit a vari­ety of ap­plic­a­tion needs, im­prov­ing over­all sys­tem flex­ib­il­ity and per­form­ance.

The new MVK Fu­sion CIP Safety mod­ules are de­signed in de­tail for in­stall­a­tion close to the pro­cess and use in harsh en­vir­on­ments: They are IP67-rated and fea­ture a ro­bust, fully en­cap­su­lated met­al hous­ing, mak­ing them res­ist­ant to shock, vi­bra­tion and tem­per­at­ures from -22°F to +140°F (-30°C to +60°C). The device con­tinu­ously mon­it­ors each chan­nel for con­di­tions such as over­load, short cir­cuits, and cable breaks. This pro­act­ive ap­proach al­lows for faster fault de­tec­tion and res­ol­u­tion, min­im­iz­ing un­planned down­time.
 

The slim-line solen­oid in­ter­lock AZM150 from Schmersal now of­fers an even wider range of ap­plic­a­tions thanks to new ac­cessor­ies and, as a com­plete sys­tem, it is also a very cost-ef­fect­ive safety solu­tion. One new ac­cess­ory is the rear-moun­ted push but­ton, which can be used for emer­gency re­lease or emer­gency un­lock­ing. Emer­gency re­lease makes it pos­sible to leave the area of danger from the in­side if a guard door has been closed in­ad­vert­ently. Emer­gency un­lock­ing en­ables the guard door to be opened from the out­side. The push but­ton is avail­able in two dif­fer­ent ver­sions: the 45 mm ver­sion for use with door pil­lar thick­nesses of 40 mm, for ex­ample, where the MP-AZM150-1 mount­ing plate can be used for mount­ing, and the 170 mm ver­sion for use with door pil­lar thick­nesses up to 170 mm.

An­oth­er new ac­cess­ory for the AZM150 is the Bowden cable re­lease with an over­all length of 6 metres, which en­ables re­mote un­lock­ing in an in­ac­cess­ible in­ter­lock in­stall­a­tion situ­ation. This provides a safe­guard in par­tic­u­lar haz­ard­ous situ­ations. Should an op­er­at­or in­ad­vert­ently be­come locked in­side a sys­tem, a Bowden cable can be used as an emer­gency re­lease. When work­ing out­side the danger zone, the Bowden cable serves as an emer­gency re­lease.

Ro­tat­ing ac­tu­at­or head 

An ad­vant­age of the AZM150 in­ter­lock is the ro­tat­ing ac­tu­at­or head, which is locked by simply put­ting the cov­er in place in­stead of a screw con­nec­tion. The 360°-ro­tat­ing ac­tu­at­or head, with its two ac­tu­at­or en­trances, en­ables dif­fer­ent mount­ing po­s­i­tions and ap­proach op­tions. This fea­ture also de­cis­ively con­trib­utes to the ver­sat­il­ity of the AZM150, which boasts a hold­ing force (FZh) of 1,500 N.

Elec­tromech­an­ic­al switch with high cod­ing

The AZM150 is an elec­tromech­an­ic­al solen­oid in­ter­lock with a "high" cod­ing level and there­fore of­fers ex­cel­lent pro­tec­tion against tam­per­ing. The ad­vant­age for the user: with high cod­ing, few­er ad­di­tion­al meas­ures against tam­per­ing are re­quired in ac­cord­ance with ISO 14119, such as mount­ing out of reach or in a con­cealed po­s­i­tion.

With the new ac­cessor­ies, the series is now a com­plete sys­tem that cov­ers a wide range of ap­plic­a­tions up to PL d / Cat3 and is also a very cost-ef­fect­ive solu­tion. The AZM150 series is ideal for smal­ler ma­chines and sys­tems or for cost-sens­it­ive ap­plic­a­tions where a low per­form­ance level is re­quired. At the same time, the com­pact elec­tromech­an­ic­al solen­oid in­ter­lock pre­cisely ful­fils the re­quired safety level at a mod­er­ate price.
 

IEN Europe: How would you de­scribe the main be­ne­fits of an MES? 
Fran­cisco Almada Lobo: Let’s clear one thing up first—MES isn’t soft­ware. It’s a concept, a cap­ab­il­ity, a set of func­tions man­u­fac­tur­ers use to ex­ecute pro­duc­tion and op­er­a­tions. Every man­u­fac­turer does MES already... wheth­er it's with Ex­cel, clip­boards, or homegrown apps duct-taped to­geth­er. The dif­fer­ence is how well you're do­ing it.

Now, mod­ern MES soft­ware is what di­git­izes and auto­mates these core ex­e­cu­tion func­tions—like schedul­ing, work in­struc­tions, trace­ab­il­ity, WIP track­ing, and qual­ity man­age­ment. And when done right? The be­ne­fits are massive:

• Vis­ib­il­ity: Real-time in­sight in­to what’s hap­pen­ing on your shop floor.
• Trace­ab­il­ity: From raw ma­ter­i­als to fin­ished goods—every step tracked.
• Pro­ductiv­ity: Less time spent on ad­min, more time mak­ing product.
• Qual­ity: Built-in checks and val­id­a­tions re­duce de­fects.
• Com­pli­ance: Audit trails and e-sig­na­tures made easy.
• Agil­ity: Faster changeovers, ad­apt­ive schedul­ing, and smarter re­sponses to is­sues.
   

In short, MES turns tri­bal know­ledge in­to di­git­al work­flows. It gives front­line work­ers su­per­powers, man­agers clar­ity, and ex­ec­ut­ives con­fid­ence. And it sets the found­a­tion for big­ger moves like AI, di­git­al twins, and lights-out man­u­fac­tur­ing.

IEN Europe: Why does every com­pany, even small ones, need a MES in the pro­cess of in­dus­tri­al trans­form­a­tion?
Fran­cisco Almada Lobo: “Need” is a re­l­at­ive term. Tech­nic­ally, no man­u­fac­turer needs an MES the same way a fish doesn’t need wa­ter fil­ters to sur­vive… but try thriv­ing without it in today's di­git­al eco­sys­tem.

Let’s start with the ba­sics: the core cap­ab­il­ity of a man­u­fac­turer is to man­u­fac­ture. That means ex­e­cu­tion isn’t just im­port­ant—it’s the core func­tion. Everything else—plan­ning, pro­cure­ment, qual­ity, sup­ply chain, even fin­ance—ex­ists to sup­port and en­able that core: get­ting the right thing made, the right way, at the right time.

And if you’re try­ing to di­git­ally trans­form your busi­ness, if you want to plug in all the cool tech like AI, pre­dict­ive ana­lyt­ics, autonom­ous schedul­ing, or even di­git­al twins—guess what they all rely on? 

Sol­id ex­e­cu­tion data. And that means do­ing MES right—not just check­ing a box that says you have one.

MES isn’t just an­oth­er sys­tem. It’s the di­git­al found­a­tion for everything that touches pro­duc­tion. If your ex­e­cu­tion is a mess—run­ning on clip­boards, spread­sheets, or duct-taped work­arounds—then all those shiny tech­no­lo­gies won’t help. They’ll just amp­li­fy the chaos.

Small man­u­fac­tur­ers of­ten think they can wait. But that’s like wait­ing to build a found­a­tion after the house is up. MES done right gives you the struc­ture, vis­ib­il­ity, and con­trol to build something scal­able, re­si­li­ent, and ready for the fu­ture. It’s not about get­ting MES.

It’s about get­ting MES right.

IEN Europe: How com­plex is the pro­cess of in­teg­ra­tion?
Fran­cisco Almada Lobo: It can be com­plex—but it doesn’t have to be. The trick is to treat MES like a pro­gram, not a project.

Yes, you’ll need to con­nect MES to ma­chines, ERP, qual­ity sys­tems, maybe even ware­house and lab sys­tems. But you don’t have to do it all at once. Start with a fo­cused scope, de­liv­er quick wins, and build mo­mentum.

In­teg­ra­tion com­plex­ity de­pends on:

• Your ex­ist­ing sys­tems and how mod­ern (or an­cient) they are.
• How much stand­ard­iz­a­tion ex­ists across your sites.
• How clean and struc­tured your data is.
• Wheth­er you’ve picked a flex­ible MES plat­form or a ri­gid one.

Smart man­u­fac­tur­ers don't try to eat the ele­phant. They carve out lo­gic­al phases. Get one line, one pro­cess, or one plant run­ning well—and rep­lic­ate. Bo­nus points if your MES sup­ports out-of-the-box con­nect­ors, REST APIs, or OPC UA—it makes the plumb­ing much easi­er.

Bot­tom line? MES in­teg­ra­tion isn’t rock­et sci­ence. But it’s not plug-and-play either. You need strong lead­er­ship, real­ist­ic timelines, and an MES part­ner who’s done this be­fore.
Get those right, and in­teg­ra­tion goes from scary to scal­able.

IEN Europe: Thanks for your time and in­sights!
 

Beck­hoff an­nounced the new Twin­CAT PLC++ soft­ware. Both en­gin­eer­ing and runtime are no­tice­ably faster, without com­prom­ising on Twin­CAT’s sig­na­ture strengths of seam­less in­teg­ra­tion, com­pat­ib­il­ity, and open­ness. Lever­aging state-of-the-art com­piler tech­no­logy and a new sys­tem struc­ture, the ad­vanced chat­bot func­tion Twin­CAT Co­A­gent is now fully em­bed­ded as an ef­fi­cient pro­gram­ming as­sist­ant.

In Twin­CAT PLC++ runtime, the same con­trol code runs up to 1.5 times faster com­pared to the pre­vi­ous Twin­CAT PLC ver­sion. A ma­jor high­light is the new Twin­CAT PLC++ com­piler, which fur­ther op­tim­izes con­trol code ex­e­cu­tion time, de­liv­er­ing an over­all per­form­ance boost of up to 3 times. The new Twin­CAT PLC++ ar­chi­tec­ture also sup­ports even deep­er in­teg­ra­tion of Twin­CAT func­tions. This al­lows Twin­CAT Co­A­gent, the evol­u­tion of Twin­CAT Chat, to be ef­fi­ciently in­teg­rated as a pro­gram­ming as­sist­ant that sup­ports both tex­tu­al and graph­ic­al code gen­er­a­tion.

Cre­at­ing I/O to­po­lo­gies via chat

Twin­CAT Co­A­gent takes con­trol en­gin­eer­ing to the next level by seam­lessly in­teg­rat­ing cut­ting-edge tech­no­logy dir­ectly in­to Twin­CAT projects. The agent provides ef­fect­ive sup­port for a wide range of tasks, from pre­cise code sug­ges­tions and smart code op­tim­iz­a­tion to auto­mat­ic cre­ation of com­pre­hens­ive doc­u­ment­a­tion. The con­tent gen­er­ated by Twin­CAT Co­A­gent can be eas­ily in­cor­por­ated in­to es­tab­lished en­gin­eer­ing projects once it has been checked by a user. Twin­CAT Co­A­gent also provides dir­ect ac­cess to Beck­hoff’s com­pre­hens­ive doc­u­ment­a­tion and sup­ports the de­vel­op­ment of user-friendly HMI con­trols. This means that user in­ter­faces can be de­signed and con­figured faster and more in­tu­it­ively than ever be­fore. The op­tion is even avail­able to cre­ate I/O to­po­lo­gies ef­fort­lessly via chat, in­clud­ing re­nam­ing ter­min­als and con­fig­ur­ing new I/O mod­ules. In the fu­ture, it will be pos­sible to ad­just para­met­ers in­di­vidu­ally, while an in­tel­li­gent as­sist­ant will provide sup­port with the op­tim­um con­fig­ur­a­tion. This not only speeds up the I/O con­fig­ur­a­tion, but also makes it par­tic­u­larly flex­ible for spe­cif­ic re­quire­ments. Twin­CAT Co­A­gent’s com­pre­hens­ive func­tion­al­ity po­s­i­tions it as a per­son­al di­git­al as­sist­ant with the po­ten­tial to re­vo­lu­tion­ize en­gin­eer­ing work­flows.
 

VPIn­stru­ments is proud to an­nounce the re­lease of VP­Vi­sion 8.1. A ma­jor up­grade packed with en­hance­ments that boost per­form­ance and im­prove data ac­cess­ib­il­ity. It of­fers faster data pro­cessing and ad­vanced KPI func­tions. The re­lease of­fers real-time mon­it­or­ing of your fact­ory util­it­ies, like com­pressed air, power, gas, steam, wa­ter and more.

Cre­at­ing cus­tom­ized per­form­ance in­dic­at­ors

The en­hanced Audit Mode, now avail­able for all sub­scrip­tions, VP­Vi­sion provides high-res­ol­u­tion, second-level data for in-depth ana­lys­is of com­pressed air and gas sys­tems. This al­lows end users to en­able gran­u­lar data col­lec­tion, giv­ing their air audit con­sult­ant dir­ect ac­cess to real-time data for ac­tion­able im­prove­ment re­com­mend­a­tions for sys­tem per­form­ance. The im­proved Audit Mode now writes data dir­ectly to CSV files in real time. With the new CSV pub­lish­er, you gain com­plete con­trol on data ex­port of this huge amount of data. Op­tions in­clude amongst oth­ers, time in­ter­val, data av­er­aging, chan­nel se­lec­tion and data format­ting. VP­Vi­sion 8.1 in­tro­duces an 'if' pro­cessor ele­ment for KPI for­mu­las, ex­pand­ing the cap­ab­il­it­ies of vir­tu­al chan­nels. This en­ables ad­vanced cal­cu­la­tions such as: Con­vert­ing com­pressor am­per­age in­to flow out­put or cre­at­ing cus­tom­ized per­form­ance in­dic­at­ors based on real-time con­di­tions. Users get a com­plete real-time en­ergy mon­it­or­ing solu­tion for all util­it­ies with­in the com­pany to track us­age and find­ing pat­terns in sup­ply and de­mand. VP­Vi­sion helps you to pre­vent un­ex­pec­ted down­time by send­ing out early warn­ings about high tem­per­at­ure, de­teri­or­ated dew point, pres­sure drop, etc. Tar­get for en­ergy sav­ings and im­proved per­form­ance can be reached on in­di­vidu­al, team or at com­pany levels.
 

Hart­ing of­fers ad­di­tions to its cir­cu­lar con­nect­or series ICC (In­dus­tri­al Cir­cu­lar Con­nect­ors) in size 20. The ap­plic­a­tion fields range from ro­bot­ics and auto­ma­tion through to mo­bile ma­chinery and en­ergy grid in­fra­struc­ture.

The ICC 20 4/3 ("4Slash3") rep­res­ents an at­tract­ive solu­tion for the sup­ply and con­trol of drives in ro­bot­ics and auto­ma­tion, for ex­ample, hand­ling power up to 40A in com­bin­a­tion with sig­nal con­tacts. The cir­cu­lar con­nect­or fea­tures the proven Han® C and Han D® con­tacts. Four power con­tacts, three sig­nal con­tacts (up to 10A/250V) and one PE con­tact are ac­com­mod­ated in the in­su­lat­or. An­oth­er ex­pan­sion to the series is a single pole, so that users can also trans­mit sig­ni­fic­antly high­er power for their ma­chines and devices. A single con­nect­or trans­mits up to 400A/600V, mak­ing it suit­able for en­ergy-in­tens­ive ap­plic­a­tions such as ro­bot arms for heavy load hand­ling or weld­ing ro­bots. Oth­er ap­plic­a­tion areas in­clude mo­bile ma­chinery and en­ergy net­work in­fra­struc­ture scen­ari­os.

Wide range of in­su­lat­ing bod­ies avail­able 

All of the series hous­ings of­fer a high de­gree of pro­tec­tion against the in­gress of dust and wa­ter (IP67/IP69), mak­ing them ideal for de­ploy­ment in harsh in­dus­tri­al en­vir­on­ments. The hous­ings re­li­ably shield elec­tro­mag­net­ic fields (EMC), thereby en­sur­ing the sig­nal in­teg­rity of the sys­tem.

The num­ber of po­ten­tial ap­plic­a­tions for the ICC 20 design is also mul­ti­plied by the in­teg­ra­tion of in­su­lat­ing bod­ies, which were pre­vi­ously re­served for the Han® 3A format. A mul­ti­tude of es­pe­cially ef­fi­cient solu­tions for power, sig­nal and data trans­mis­sion are pos­sible here – from simple Han® C, Han D® or Han® E monoblocks through to USB, RJ45 and oth­er data in­ter­faces. The size 3 A in­su­lat­ors also provide vari­ous con­nec­tion tech­no­lo­gies, such as the new push-in quick con­nec­tion tech­no­logy.

Autron­ic has re­defined a true clas­sic with the up­dated HFBC60-W/Ks. Un­der the motto "Fa­mil­i­ar on the out­side, com­pletely new on the in­side," the com­pact and power­ful con­vert­er has un­der­gone ex­tens­ive mod­ern­iz­a­tion to con­tin­ue meet­ing the de­mand­ing re­quire­ments of rail­way tech­no­logy. The HFBC60-W/Ks com­plies with the strin­gent stand­ards EN 50155 and EN 50121-3-2, mak­ing it ideal for use in harsh en­vir­on­ments along the rail­way too.

The HFBC60-W/Ks’s com­pact di­men­sions (113 mm x 46 mm x 35 mm) en­able seam­less design-in. Its full com­pli­ance with rail­way-spe­cif­ic EMC re­quire­ments (surge, burst, emis­sions, and im­munity) elim­in­ates the need for ad­di­tion­al cir­cuitry. An in­teg­rated 10-ms hold-up time en­sures re­li­able op­er­a­tion even dur­ing short-term voltage dips. The con­vert­er im­presses with fea­tures such as act­ive in­rush cur­rent lim­it­a­tion, act­ive re­verse po­lar­ity pro­tec­tion, and com­pre­hens­ive safe­guards against over­cur­rent, over­voltage, and over­heat­ing (OVP, OCP, OTP). Cus­tom­ers have long ap­pre­ci­ated how easy this con­vert­er is to put in­to op­er­a­tion.

Flex­ib­il­ity and Ef­fi­ciency 

With just one con­vert­er, nom­in­al in­put voltages from 24 V to 110 V (±40%) are covered, sig­ni­fic­antly sim­pli­fy­ing the ap­prov­al pro­cess for cus­tom­er ap­plic­a­tions. The gal­van­ic­ally isol­ated con­vert­er guar­an­tees re­li­able per­form­ance with an ef­fi­ciency of up to 91 % and an out­put power of 60 W, provid­ing full op­er­at­ing se­cur­ity without de­rat­ing—even un­der ex­treme tem­per­at­ure con­di­tions (OT4, ST1, ST2) or all per­miss­ible in­put voltage ranges.

In­stall­a­tion is re­mark­ably simple: nat­ur­al con­vec­tion com­bined with con­tact to the mount­ing sur­face is en­tirely suf­fi­cient. The ma­ter­i­als chosen for the PCB and pot­ting com­pound meet the highest fire safety stand­ards in ac­cord­ance with EN 45545-2 (HL3). The HFBC60-W/Ks is avail­able with out­put voltages of 5 V, 12 V, and 24 V, seam­lessly in­teg­rat­ing in­to any design. Ver­sions with a power out­put of 100 W are also avail­able.
 

ITEN un­veiled a ma­jor ad­vance­ment in en­ergy stor­age. ITEN’s latest SSB achieves an un­pre­ced­en­ted 200C dis­charge rate (200 times the bat­tery’s ca­pa­city per hour) —100 times high­er than con­ven­tion­al Li-ion bat­ter­ies—set­ting a new bench­mark for mini­atur­ized en­ergy stor­age. This tech­no­logy is now be­ing man­u­fac­tured at scale to build the Powency™ product fam­ily, with the com­pany’s high-volume pro­duc­tion cap­ab­il­it­ies ready to meet grow­ing de­mand for IoT and oth­er con­nec­ted devices across vari­ous in­dus­tries.

With over 100 cus­tom­ers across vari­ous in­dus­tries already sampling ITEN bat­ter­ies and design­ing con­nec­ted devices with ITEN’s tech­no­logy, the Powency™ products are now qual­i­fied for full-scale pro­duc­tion in the second half of 2025. ITEN’s Dar­dilly pi­lot line has the ca­pa­city to pro­duce more than 30 mil­lion bat­ter­ies per year, with on­go­ing plans to launch a high-ca­pa­city man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­ity by 2028 to meet in­creas­ing mar­ket de­mand.

This tech­no­lo­gic­al ad­vance­ment is based on ITEN's ex­pert­ise in nan­o­ma­ter­i­als to en­gin­eer full-ceram­ic elec­trodes fea­tur­ing a pat­en­ted meso­por­ous struc­ture that sig­ni­fic­antly en­hances their spe­cif­ic sur­face area. This scal­able tech­no­logy de­liv­ers an un­matched com­bin­a­tion of power dens­ity, re­charge speed, safety and re­li­ab­il­ity. ITEN is cur­rently trans­form­ing en­ergy solu­tions for in­dus­tries by provid­ing very small, ef­fi­cient, and long-last­ing power sources. This in­nov­a­tion en­ables new pos­sib­il­it­ies for a wide range of end mar­kets, re­du­cing de­pend­ence on tra­di­tion­al en­ergy stor­age tech­no­lo­gies and of­fer­ing more sus­tain­able and re­li­able al­tern­at­ives.

Un­matched Per­form­ance for High-Power IoT Ap­plic­a­tions and Bey­ond

ITEN’s Powency™ product fam­ily of sol­id-state bat­ter­ies is de­signed for high power dens­ity, ideal for de­liv­er­ing rap­id en­ergy bursts in wire­less sensor ap­plic­a­tions. The 200C dis­charge rate is demon­strated by the Powency™ 150 mi­croampere-hours (μAh) mod­el with an 18 mm² foot­print, trans­lat­ing in­to peak cur­rent cap­ab­il­it­ies of 30 mil­li­amps (mA) for 50-mil­li­second pulse lengths. 

All Powency™ bat­ter­ies will lever­age this high-power dens­ity at­trib­ute to provide the elec­tron­ics mar­ket with area-op­tim­ized bat­ter­ies de­liv­er­ing bursts of cur­rent cap­able of sup­port­ing cel­lu­lar Low Power Wide Area Net­work (LP­WAN) com­mu­nic­a­tions.

Con­ven­tion­al Li-ion bat­ter­ies typ­ic­ally sup­port dis­charge rates of 2C to 5C, lim­it­ing their abil­ity to handle high-power ap­plic­a­tions. ITEN’s pro­pri­et­ary sol­id-state bat­tery tech­no­logy over­comes this con­straint, mak­ing it an ideal en­ergy buf­fer when paired with en­ergy har­vesters. With their unique power dens­ity at­trib­ute, these bat­ter­ies en­able in­stant power de­liv­ery, mak­ing them par­tic­u­larly suit­able for as­set track­ing, smart homes and build­ings, smart ag­ri­cul­ture, meter­ing, re­mote con­trols, and wire­less sensors.

This in­nov­a­tion also en­ables hy­brid ar­chi­tec­tures where primary bat­ter­ies are paired with a Powency™ device to im­prove the cost, lifespan, and sus­tain­ab­il­ity of IoT and oth­er con­nec­ted devices. Bey­ond IoT, ITEN is also de­vel­op­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of SMD sol­id-state bat­ter­ies for wear­ables, con­sumer and health­care ap­plic­a­tions, de­signed to of­fer high ca­pa­city and en­ergy dens­ity for de­mand­ing use cases.

Thanks to its sol­id-state tech­no­logy, ITEN’s Powency™ bat­ter­ies re­tain at least 50% of their ca­pa­city at -20°C, where­as con­ven­tion­al Li-ion bat­ter­ies typ­ic­ally lose 80-90% of their ca­pa­city. Ad­di­tion­ally, the Powency™ bat­ter­ies boast a longer cycle life, en­dur­ing up to 250 cycles at 100% depth of dis­charge at 70°C, and re­charge quickly - reach­ing 80% ca­pa­city typ­ic­ally in 6 minutes.

ITEN’s full con­trol over the man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­cess al­lows the com­pany to cre­ate cus­tom­ized bat­tery designs tailored to spe­cif­ic ap­plic­a­tions.

En­hanced Safety & High­er Sus­tain­ab­il­ity

ITEN’s sol­id-state bat­tery tech­no­logy provides en­hanced in­trins­ic safety, elim­in­at­ing risks of fire, thermal run­away, or ig­ni­tion. In ad­di­tion to su­per­i­or per­form­ance, ITEN’s SSBs of­fer a more sus­tain­able al­tern­at­ive to tra­di­tion­al coin-cell bat­ter­ies. Their long-last­ing, re­chargeable design helps re­duce bat­tery waste, while the ITEN pro­duc­tion pro­cess ex­cludes the use of co­balt and heavy solvents. ITEN’s bat­ter­ies are free of haz­ard­ous ma­ter­i­als and com­ply with RoHS (Re­stric­tion of Haz­ard­ous Sub­stances) and REACH (Re­gis­tra­tion, Eval­u­ation, Au­thor­iz­a­tion, and Re­stric­tion of Chem­ic­als), two key European Uni­on en­vir­on­ment­al reg­u­la­tions fo­cused on chem­ic­al safety and en­vir­on­ment­al pro­tec­tion. The en­vir­on­ment­ally re­spons­ible man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­cess also op­er­ates at low tem­per­at­ures, min­im­iz­ing its eco­lo­gic­al foot­print.
 

FLIR in­tro­duces two new thermal spot cam­er­as: the FLIR TG268 and TG298. These thermal ima­ging cam­er­as provide pro­fes­sion­als in the util­ity, man­u­fac­tur­ing, elec­tric­al, auto­mot­ive and in­dus­tri­al sec­tors with a light­weight, port­able and af­ford­able tool for con­di­tion mon­it­or­ing that fea­tures a num­ber of key im­prove­ments. Among the im­prove­ments FLIR has im­ple­men­ted are high­er tem­per­at­ure ranges to cov­er even more ap­plic­a­tions, im­proved thermal im­age res­ol­u­tion and in­creased data stor­age ca­pa­city. FLIR also in­tro­duces on-cam­era con­di­tion mon­it­or­ing and con­nectiv­ity to its METERLiNK app for file trans­fer to mo­bile devices.

The FLIR TG268 thermal spot tem­per­at­ure cam­era takes users bey­ond the lim­it­a­tions of single spot IR ther­mo­met­ers to view and as­sess hot and cold spots that can in­dic­ate po­ten­tially dan­ger­ous prob­lems. Per­fect for the un­com­prom­ising de­mands of com­mer­cial elec­tric­al, build­ing main­ten­ance and HVAC ap­plic­a­tions, this in­nov­at­ive thermal ima­ging cam­era re­duces dia­gnost­ic time by provid­ing tar­geted tem­per­at­ure de­tec­tion (with a bull­seye laser cap­ab­il­ity), while sim­pli­fy­ing re­pair and main­ten­ance re­port­ing.

Built to with­stand harsh op­er­at­ing en­vir­on­ments, the FLIR TG268 fea­tures an in­dus­tri­al design with IP54 rat­ing, 2-metre drop test, 100-bright flash­light and Type K ther­mo­couple. Its fast start-up time of ap­prox­im­ately 6 seconds en­sures that it is ready to check everything from elec­tric­al con­nec­tions to mech­an­ic­al fail­ures quickly and ac­cur­ately. It meas­ures from -25°C to 400°C (752°F) with a 24:1 spot size ra­tio and a bull­seye laser point­er.

Multi-spec­tral im­age en­hance­ment

The im­ager of­fers im­proved de­tail of nat­ive thermal im­ages with Su­per Res­ol­u­tion (up­scal­ing to best-in-class 320×240). To help dia­gnose prob­lems faster, it of­fers FLIR's pat­en­ted MSX® (Multi-Spec­tral Dy­nam­ic Ima­ging) im­age en­hance­ment. With MSX, users can add de­tail by em­boss­ing visu­al scene de­tails onto full thermal im­ages, provid­ing ad­di­tion­al con­text to ac­cur­ately tar­get po­ten­tial faults and troubleshoot re­pairs.

The FLIR METERLiNK app (with Ig­nite Sync) can be used to take meas­ure­ments re­motely (from a safe dis­tance) and doc­u­ment in­spec­tion data for field re­port­ing and shar­ing. The app provides a live view of data read­ings from up to sev­en paired devices.

For high tem­per­at­ures

The FLIR TG298 is an in­dus­tri­al thermal dia­gnost­ic tool that provides ac­cur­ate tem­per­at­ure meas­ure­ment and the abil­ity to im­age up to 1080°C (1976°F) with a 30:1 spot size ra­tio and bull­seye laser point­er. Ap­plic­a­tions in­clude tem­per­at­ure meas­ure­ment and re­mote mon­it­or­ing of high tem­per­at­ure ap­plic­a­tions such as glass fur­naces, kilns and forges, as well as man­u­fac­tur­ing ap­plic­a­tions.

For pres­sure meas­ure­ment in devices with in­teg­rated SPS/PLC or oth­er mod­u­lar con­trol, tra­di­tion­al en­cap­su­lated trans­mit­ters are of­ten too ex­pens­ive and too large. OEM sensors for sol­der­ing are in-ex­pens­ive, but in ad­di­tion to their own cir­cuit board, they re­quire vari­ous elec­tron­ic com­pon­ents for ad­just­ing the in­put and out­put voltage levels and pro­tec­tion against po­lar­ity re­versal and short-cir­cuit­ing. AM­SYS of­fers a good solu­tion here with the small, in­ex­pens­ive pres­sure sensor mod­ules such as the AMS 2710. 

The AMS 2710 series are ready-to-in­stall in­dus­tri­al pres­sure sensors, which are moun­ted on a print-ed cir­cuit board and can be eas­ily in­stalled in a hous­ing without ad­di­tion­al com­pon­ents. They are avail­able for ab­so­lute, re­l­at­ive and dif­fer­en­tial pres­sure meas­ure­ment in a wide pres­sure range from 5 mbar up to 2 bar. The mod­ules are also avail­able as bi­d­irec­tion­al dif­fer­en­tial ver­sions (for neg­at­ive and pos­it­ive pres­sure meas­ure­ment). 

In­di­vidu­ally cal­ib­rated and com­pensated

These ex­ten­ded pres­sure sensors have a 0..10 V voltage out­put at 12..36 V sup­ply. Due to their ro-bust, re­verse po­lar­ity pro­tec­ted sig­nal out­put and cur­rent lim­it­ing, they are thus pre­destined for in-dus­tri­al en­vir­on­ments. Due to the dif­fer­ent con­nec­tion con­fig­ur­a­tions, the AMS 2710 can be con-nec­ted via solder con­tacts, a plug or a cable ter­min­al strip. The PCB sensor mod­ules are in­di­vidu­ally cal­ib­rated and com­pensated and achieve a total ac­cur­acy of 0.5 %FS in the en­tire tem­per­at­ure range (-25..85 °C) and in the pres­sure range > 200 mbar. 

In terms of their func­tion­al­ity, the new PCB pres­sure sensor mod­ules stand between OEM sensors, which have to be soldered onto PCBs with ad­di­tion­al com­pon­ents, and ready-to-in­stall, housed pres-sure trans­mit­ters. In ad­di­tion to the simple con­nec­tion to ex­ist­ing con­trol­lers, the mod­ules can also be used to very eas­ily man­u­fac­ture in­di­vidu­al trans­mit­ters with their own hous­ing. Fur­ther vari­ants ex­ist with the AMS 2711 with 0..5 V voltage out­put. Cus­tom­ized pres­sure ranges (up to 10 bar) and oth­er modi­fic­a­tions are avail­able on re­quest.
 

ifm has fur­ther de­veloped its tried-and-tested gen­er­a­tion of type PG pres­sure sensors with ana­logue dis­plays, by fo­cus­sing upon di­git­al­ising the sensors and ex­pand­ing visu­al­isa­tion op­tions. The re­designed dis­play unit now of­fers a quick over­view of the pre­vi­ously defined meas­ur­ing ranges and lim­it val­ues through a ring of col­oured LEDs. In­stead of manu­ally ap­ply­ing mark­ings to the dis­play hous­ing, the min­im­um, middle and max­im­um ranges can now be visu­al­ised us­ing dif­fer­ent col­oured LEDs. Thanks to IO-Link, the de­sired meas­ur­ing ranges can be defined quickly and eas­ily and ad­ap­ted to each ap­plic­a­tion. The bright LEDs en­able the user to see from a dis­tance wheth­er the point­er is in the green area or already close to the lim­it. 

Meas­ures up to 400 bar

Pro­cess val­ues and ad­di­tion­al in­form­a­tion are con­tinu­ously trans­mit­ted us­ing IO-Link tech­no­logy. Be­cause data is trans­mit­ted in a purely di­git­al form based on a 24 V sig­nal, it is con­ver­sion and loss-free. The PG pres­sure sensors boast a meas­ur­ing range from -1 to 400 bar. As with pre­vi­ous mod­els in the PG product fam­ily, the sensors are equipped with a ro­bust ceram­ic meas­ur­ing cell. For max­im­um safety in crit­ic­al ap­plic­a­tions, the meas­ur­ing cell has a dia­gnost­ic func­tion that dis­plays the cell’s status. 

Tem­per­at­ure res­ist­ant up to 150°C

The elec­tron­ic mano­met­ers are used in the food in­dustry and oth­er in­dus­tri­al en­vir­on­ments. To meet the pre­vail­ing re­quire­ments, two device vari­ants were de­veloped with dif­fer­ing ap­provals and tech­nic­al prop­er­ties. For ex­ample, the device vari­ant for food ap­plic­a­tions is per­man­ently tem­per­at­ure-res­ist­ant up to 150°C and will com­pensate for the dy­nam­ic tem­per­at­ure jumps that can oc­cur in clean­ing cycles. The sensors are sup­plied with dif­fer­ent con­nec­tion vari­ants. For ex­ample, the sensors can be eas­ily and safely moun­ted in con­tain­ers or pipes us­ing an Aseptoflex Vario con­nec­tion. 
 

Optris is in­tro­du­cing new di­git­al in­ter­faces for pro­cess auto­ma­tion for the latest pyro­met­er mod­els from the CT, CT­laser, CTra­tio, and CS­vi­sion series, as well as the Eth­er­net-based Xi series in­frared cam­er­as (ETH). This enabes even more seam­less in­teg­ra­tion in­to in­dus­tri­al auto­ma­tion sys­tems.

With the new di­git­al in­ter­faces, Optris sup­ports com­mon in­dus­tri­al pro­to­cols such as Profinet, Eth­er­Net/IP, Eth­er­net TCP/IP, and Mod­bus TCP. This en­sures re­li­able real-time trans­mis­sion of tem­per­at­ure meas­ure­ments, en­han­cing con­trol and mon­it­or­ing of man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­cesses.

Ro­bust Net­work­ing for De­mand­ing En­vir­on­ments

The new In­dus­tri­al Eth­er­net in­ter­face mod­ules, like all pre­vi­ous in­ter­faces, are seam­lessly in­teg­rated in­to the CT elec­tron­ics. In­stall­a­tion is simple via a 4-pin D-coded sock­et with IP67 pro­tec­tion and stand­ard­ized in­dus­tri­al net­work cables.

For CS­vi­sion and Eth­er­net-based Xi Series (ETH), the new in­ter­faces are provided as sep­ar­ate in­ter­face boxes. A wide range of cable lengths al­lows for per­fect ad­apt­a­tion to dif­fer­ent in­stall­a­tion con­di­tions. All com­pon­ents are de­signed to meet IP67 stand­ards, en­sur­ing op­tim­al pro­tec­tion for in­dus­tri­al use in de­mand­ing pro­duc­tion en­vir­on­ments.

For quick and hassle-free com­mis­sion­ing, Optris provides pre-con­figured EDS and GSD files. These en­able easy device im­ple­ment­a­tion in­to ex­ist­ing con­trol sys­tems and sig­ni­fic­antly re­duce in­teg­ra­tion ef­fort. Ad­di­tion­ally, the di­git­al in­ter­faces are cer­ti­fied to en­sure seam­less com­pat­ib­il­ity with com­mon in­dus­tri­al stand­ards.

Op­tim­ized Pro­cesses Through Smart Tem­per­at­ure Mon­it­or­ing

Thanks to en­hanced net­work con­nectiv­ity, Optris' in­frared tem­per­at­ure meas­ure­ment devices can now be in­teg­rated even more pre­cisely and flex­ibly in­to in­dus­tri­al pro­cesses. This en­ables im­proved pro­cess con­trol, re­duces down­time, and in­creases pro­duc­tion ef­fi­ciency. 
 

Lika Electronic launches a new line of stainless-steel encoders designed for the food and beverage, chemical, pharmaceutical and medical industries.
All parts (housing, flange, shaft, bearings, PG cable glands) are made of stainless steel with a robust construction that ensures IP protection up to IP67 and a broad operating temperature range from -40°C to +100°C. They are available in hollow shaft versions with diameters from 6 to 15 mm.

Resolution up to 30 bits

The EXO58/EXM58 encoders can be fitted with the most popular Ethernet interfaces: Profinet, EtherNet/IP, EtherCAT, POWERLINK, Modbus/TCP and CC-Link. Singleturn versions offer resolutions up to 18 bits, while multiturn versions offer resolutions up to 30 bits. 

The EMC59K encoders offer SSI or programmable analogue interfaces. The SSI version can be singleturn or multiturn with resolutions up to 27 bits. The analogue version is fully programmable and is available in a full range of voltage and current analogue signals: 0-5V, 0-10V, -5/+5V, -10/+10V, 4-20mA, 0-24mA and 4-24mA.
 

With its NET­RIS® fam­ily, WIKA has launched three ra­dio units that en­sure seam­less and se­cure trans­mis­sion of meas­ured data in II­oT ap­plic­a­tions. The in­stru­ments al­low bat­tery-powered wire­less trans­mis­sion via the li­cence-free LoR­aWAN® (“Long Range Wide Area Net­work”) ra­dio stand­ard. This en­ables long ranges of up to 10 km and a long bat­tery life of up to 5 years. The ra­dio units can be eas­ily con­figured via WIKA’s web-based II­oT cloud plat­form and the LoR­aWAN® net­work, in some cases also via mo­bile devices us­ing the “my­WIKA wire­less device” app.

Dif­fer­ent in­ter­face set­tings

The NET­RIS® in­stru­ments are part of WIKA’s II­oT plat­form, which is avail­able either as a soft­ware-as-a-ser­vice or on-premises solu­tion. The cloud plat­form of­fers full end-to-end en­cryp­tion with bi-dir­ec­tion­al com­mu­nic­a­tion for a se­cure II­oT en­vir­on­ment. Stand­ard sensors can be con­nec­ted to the com­pact NET­RIS®1 and -2 ra­dio units to trans­mit meas­ured data wire­lessly to the cloud for big-data ana­lys­is. In ad­di­tion to the li­cence-free LoR­aWAN® and mioty® ra­dio stand­ards, the NET­RIS®1 in­stru­ment uses Bluetooth® for con­fig­ur­a­tion and short-range data trans­mis­sion. WIKA has de­veloped the NET­RIS®2 and -3 Ex ra­dio units for cent­ral­ised, web-based re­mote mon­it­or­ing of meas­ured data in haz­ard­ous areas. NET­RIS®2 re­ceives the data via two in­trins­ic­ally safe, ana­logue 4 ... 20 mA in­put sig­nals, while NET­RIS®3 already re­ceives the data di­git­ally from a WIKA meas­ur­ing in­stru­ment via an in­trins­ic­ally safe in­ter­face. The fully en­cap­su­lated in­stru­ments with IP55 or IP65 in­gress pro­tec­tion con­tinu­ously trans­mit the in­form­a­tion to the cloud via con­fig­ur­able data pack­ets us­ing LoR­aWAN.
 

Four new products mark the launch of the third generation of the popular Balluff BGL series fork light barrierrs, which will gradually replace the previous models. In addition, the new BGL Entry series offers an optimized and cost-effective basic version.

Saving Time and Costs

As compact sensors, the BGL fork light barriers are pre-adjusted and combine the transmitter and receiver in a single housing. Thanks to plug-and-play functionality, they can be easily and directly integrated into existing systems and machines, saving both time and costs. In addition to straightforward installation, they offer high precision and reliability, as well as maximum stability in applications due to their extensive functional reserve. 

Thanks to IO-Link, all sensors in the optimized third generation can be centrally parameterized; both the switching status and the signal value can be continuously monitored. Additionally, the sensors can also be used in Standard IO mode (SIO mode), just like the previous generation. The fork light barriers feature improved specifications, including a higher switching frequency and better resolution compared to the second generation. The device is equipped with a potentiometer for sensitivity adjustment and offers IO-Link as an interface. 

Focus on the essentials

In contrast, BGL Entry focuses on basic functions. It does not offer IO-Link or adjustment options on the device but is significantly more cost-effective. They use visible red transmitter light, ensuring easy alignment. They focus on essential basic functions, reliably detecting objects regardless of color or surface. Thanks to their robust IP67 zinc die-cast housing, they perform even under demanding industrial conditions.

Fork sizes of 30, 50, and 80 mm allow for versatile applications. Mechanically, the new models are fully compatible with existing variants. 
 

The new double-stage air compressors of the DS series from AERZEN compress absolutely oil-free in accordance with ISO 8573-1, class 0 and guarantee outstanding performance in almost all application areas at differential pressures between 5.5 and 10.5 bar. Applications in sectors such as the food and beverage industry, chemical and process engineering as well as medical and pharmaceutical technology place the highest requirements on compressed air quality. After all, impurities in the compressed air such as dust, moisture, oils or microorganisms have an impact on product quality and the production process. With its DS series, AERZEN now offers new smart and efficient air compressors for oil-free compression.

Exceptionally high energy efficiency 

The new double-stage screw compressors are available in nine sizes from 55 to 315 kW and volume flows from 180 to 2,920 m3/h. They reliably provide 100% oil-free process air (certified according to ISO 8573-1 Class 0) and achieve energy savings of up to 12% compared with the best-performing compressor models currently available on the market. This leap in efficiency is achieved by innovative bare-shaft compressors with new, highly efficient 4+6 rotor profiles in the low and high-pressure stages and motors with energy efficiency class IE4 or IE5. A variable frequency drive is integrated and guarantees optimum operation with a large turndown. The DS series is equipped with a direct drive using a coupling and gear drive for optimum drive efficiency and has stainless steel rotors in both stages to prevent corrosion.

Maximum reliability and durability  

The compressed air packages have been designed for maximal reliability and durability, and they achieve outstanding performance even in extreme climatic conditions. An effective sealing concept for the drive shaft and conveying chamber minimises natural seal wear. The smart oil concept with oil cooler, electrical oil pressure switch for a constant oil level check and a mechanical oil pump contribute to the high level of robustness and energy efficiency. The oil-lubricated anti-friction bearings with pressure lubrication achieve a service life of at least 40,000 hours.

Maximum energy efficiency, quality, durability and reliability, paired with minimal maintenance effort/costs and low noise levels - these are the new double-stage, oil-free screw compressors in the DS series. The process air generation is of course PFAS-free, without compromising on performance and durability. Thanks to the extremely compact design, the machine footprint is small. The smart package concept even facilitates side-by-side installation, as maintenance can be carried out from both the operating and the rear sides. The entire package can easily be transported using a pallet truck, forklift truck or crane.

The Pfeif­fer Va­cu­um HiS­croll 46 achieves high pump­ing speeds, of­fer­ing power­ful va­cu­um per­form­ance in terms of size to pump­ing speed ra­tio. Weigh­ing eight­een kilo­grams less than com­par­able products on the mar­ket, it provides ef­fi­ciency and ease of use. The small size of the HiS­croll 46 makes it a fit­ting choice for ana­lyt­ic and in­dus­tri­al ap­plic­a­tions and even semi­con­duct­or ap­plic­a­tions where space is at a premi­um.

One of the key fea­tures of the HiS­croll 46 is its quiet op­er­a­tion. The single-phase mo­tor vari­ant boasts a sound pres­sure level of just 50 dB(A), mak­ing it one of the quietest va­cu­um pumps avail­able. Op­er­at­ing at only 280 W, the HiS­croll con­sumes 50% less en­ergy than oth­er scroll or multi-stage va­cu­um pumps. 

The three-phase mo­tor vari­ant of the HiS­croll 46 is de­signed with cus­tom­er con­veni­ence in mind. Equipped with a Hart­ing power plug, it re­quires just a one-time wir­ing setup by the cus­tom­er to match the loc­al power sup­ply. After this ini­tial in­stall­a­tion, the pump can be eas­ily op­er­ated by simply un­plug­ging and plug­ging it back in, al­low­ing for im­me­di­ate use without the need for ad­di­tion­al pro­fes­sion­al elec­tric­al in­stall­a­tion. The ro­bust and ef­fi­cient three-phase mo­tor design will also come with IP44 cer­ti­fic­a­tion, en­han­cing its com­pat­ib­il­ity with in­dus­tri­al en­vir­on­ments.

Flex­ib­il­ity across in­dus­tries

The HiS­croll 46 has a high tol­er­ance to wa­ter va­por. Its spe­cial pat­ent-pending gas mode func­tion al­lows a wa­ter va­por ca­pa­city of up to 530g/h for the single-phase power sup­ply vari­ant. This makes it a fit­ting op­tion for ap­plic­a­tions with high wa­ter con­tent such as freeze-dry­ing and cryo­gen­ic pro­cesses. Its ver­sat­il­ity ex­tends to the use in mass spec­tro­metry, coat­ing ap­plic­a­tions, etch­ing, or dis­til­la­tion. The HiS­croll 46 not only de­liv­ers ro­bust per­form­ance but also of­fers op­tion­al in­tel­li­gent fea­tures. One such fea­ture is the fully auto­mat­ic gas bal­last, which can be con­veni­ently switched on and off based on pres­sure, thanks to the in­teg­rated pres­sure sensor. Ad­di­tion­ally, the ad­apt­ab­il­ity of the HiS­croll 46, like the op­tion to also in­stall a two-stage gas bal­last to bet­ter in­di­vidu­al­ize cus­tom­er pro­cesses, makes it fit the di­verse needs of its vari­ous areas of ap­plic­a­tion. 
 

From power gen­er­a­tion to food pro­duc­tion, there is a need to re­duce the amount of car­bon di­ox­ide en­ter­ing the at­mo­sphere. Tech­niques for sep­ar­at­ing CO₂ from gas streams are evolving rap­idly, but the sus­tain­ab­il­ity im­per­at­ive is rais­ing new chal­lenges for every­one in­volved. 

De­car­bon­isa­tion at scale is a big chal­lenge. The 2015 Par­is Agree­ment com­mit­ted sig­nat­or­ies to lim­it glob­al tem­per­at­ure rise to well be­low 2°C above pre-in­dus­tri­al levels (ht­tps://un­fc­cc.int/about-us/un­fc­cc-archives/the-un­fc­cc-archiv­al-ex­hib­i­tion/the-par­is-agree­ment-ex­hib­it). Es­tim­ates sug­gest that between 350 and 1,200 giga­tonnes (Gt) of CO₂ must be cap­tured and stored this cen­tury to achieve this tar­get. Cur­rently, around 40 mega­tonnes (Mt) of CO₂ are cap­tured and stored an­nu­ally, so ca­pa­city must in­crease at least 100-fold by 2050 (  ht­tps://www.we­for­um.org/agenda/2020/12/car­bon-cap­ture-and-stor­age-can-help-us-beat-cli­mate-change/). De­vel­op­ment and de­ploy­ment of car­bon cap­ture, util­isa­tion and stor­age (CCUS) tech­no­lo­gies at scale is es­sen­tial. 

CCUS en­com­passes a suite of tech­no­lo­gies de­signed to cap­ture CO₂ in­clud­ing emis­sions from point sources such as power plants and in­dus­tri­al fa­cil­it­ies, pre­vent­ing their re­lease in­to the at­mo­sphere. The cap­tured CO₂ can then be pro­cessed for stor­age un­der­ground or re­pur­posed for in­dus­tri­al use. Fil­tra­tion plays a crit­ic­al role at every stage: from de­con­tam­in­at­ing the source gas, through CO₂ cap­ture & on­wards to com­pres­sion, trans­port­a­tion, and stor­age or re­use.

The cost of car­bon cap­ture

In­dus­tri­al-scale de­car­bon­isa­tion poses the ques­tion of what to do with all that cap­tured car­bon. Es­sen­tially, the choice is per­man­ent stor­age or re­use.

Per­man­ent CO₂ stor­age raises sev­er­al chal­lenges. Identi­fy­ing and as­sess­ing po­ten­tial stor­age sites can be time-con­sum­ing and ex­pens­ive. Where ap­pro­pri­ate geo­lo­gic­al sites are iden­ti­fied, they may need to be ad­ap­ted and mon­itored con­tinu­ously. Trans­port­a­tion to suit­able se­quest­ra­tion loc­a­tions is ar­gu­ably the biggest bar­ri­er to CO₂ stor­age.  Trans­port­a­tion dis­tances can be con­sid­er­able, or down­right im­prac­tic­al. Build­ing, mon­it­or­ing and main­tain­ing the ne­ces­sary in­fra­struc­ture adds sig­ni­fic­ant costs (ht­tps://www.sol­artron­isa.com/in­dus­tries/clean-en­ergy/car­bon-cap­ture/chal­lenges-of-ccs). For car­bon cap­ture to be­come vi­able at the scales re­quired to achieve in­dus­tri­al de­car­bon­isa­tion tar­gets, stor­age is un­likely to present the most eco­nom­ic­al or prac­tic­al long-term solu­tion. 

Util­isa­tion can be a sim­pler and less costly op­tion. Re­using cap­tured CO₂ in oth­er in­dus­tri­al pro­cesses sup­ports the spir­it and in­tent of the Par­is Agree­ment by mak­ing the pro­cess more sus­tain­able. There are already es­tab­lished mar­kets for CO₂, such as car­bon­ated drinks, food pack­aging, fire sup­pres­sion & en­hanced plant growth plus emer­ging mar­kets that in­clude the pro­duc­tion of eFuels. Us­ing cir­cu­lar eco­nomy prin­ciples means that cap­tured CO₂ be­comes a value stream rather than a fin­an­cial bur­den for car­bon-in­tens­ive in­dus­tries (  ht­tps://www.sci­en­ce­dir­ect.com/sci­ence/art­icle/pii/S1674987123001494). 

Fil­tra­tion and car­bon qual­ity

Wheth­er you are design­ing a car­bon cap­ture sys­tem for stor­age or util­isa­tion, the qual­ity of the cap­tured CO₂ is crit­ic­al for suc­cess – and this is where fil­tra­tion comes in­to its own. Fil­tra­tion not only re­moves con­tam­in­ants to de­liv­er the de­sired fi­nal product qual­ity, it also pro­tects pro­cessing equip­ment and im­proves op­er­a­tion­al ef­fi­ciency. 

CCUS projects primar­ily fo­cus on cap­tur­ing CO₂ emis­sions from point sources. It is cur­rently far more cost-ef­fect­ive to cap­ture the gas dir­ectly from con­cen­trated ex­haust streams rather than from the am­bi­ent air. Cor­rectly ap­plied, fil­tra­tion main­tains car­bon cap­ture sys­tem ef­fi­ciency and de­liv­ers the CO2 to down­stream pro­cesses with min­im­al con­tam­in­a­tion.  

1. Post-com­bus­tion fil­tra­tion
Chem­ic­al ab­sorp­tion is the most ma­ture tech­no­logy for post-com­bus­tion cap­ture. It uses solvents such as amines to se­lect­ively ab­sorb CO₂ from the flue gas and is com­monly de­ployed in power plants, ce­ment pro­duc­tion, and oth­er in­dus­tries that burn hy­dro­car­bons to pro­duce en­ergy. Closed loop heat re­gen­er­a­tion cycles are then em­ployed to the cap­tured CO₂ from the solvents, thus al­low­ing the con­cen­trated CO2 to be com­pressed for trans­port­a­tion or stor­age. Fig­ure 1 il­lus­trates the primary points where fil­tra­tion should be ap­plied in a solvent ab­sorp­tion sys­tem. 
An ef­fect­ive fil­tra­tion sys­tem will util­ise a com­bin­a­tion of gas fil­ters to re­duce flue gas con­tam­in­ant al­lied with li­quid par­tic­u­late fil­ters to main­tain solvent qual­ity & re­duce ab­sorber foul­ing, foam­ing, and solvent de­grad­a­tion, which res­ult in a lower per unit CO₂ cap­ture rate and ex­hausted CO₂ es­cap­ing in­to the at­mo­sphere. Re­sid­ual or­gan­ics and hy­dro­car­bon re­mov­al via ac­tiv­ated car­bon fil­tra­tion is equally im­port­ant. Any con­tam­in­a­tion reach­ing the top of the ab­sorber column will dir­ectly im­pact the qual­ity of the CO₂ and may lead to in­ef­fi­cient CO₂ cap­ture.

2. Pre-com­bus­tion cap­ture
Car­bon di­ox­ide can also be sep­ar­ated from the fuel be­fore com­bus­tion oc­curs. The pre-com­bus­tion cap­ture meth­od is com­monly used in in­teg­rated gas­i­fic­a­tion com­bined cycle (IG­CC) plants, where fossil fuels are con­ver­ted in­to syn­gas (a mix­ture of car­bon monox­ide, hy­dro­gen, and CO₂). In a pro­cess known as a phase shift re­ac­tion, car­bon monox­ide re­acts with steam to in­crease the con­cen­tra­tion of hy­dro­gen and CO₂ in the gas mix­ture. The CO₂ is then sep­ar­ated and the hy­dro­gen is used as a clean fuel.
Fil­tra­tion is re­quired to re­move im­pur­it­ies such as sul­fur com­pounds, par­tic­u­lates and mois­ture from the syn­gas be­fore CO₂ sep­ar­a­tion. Mem­brane tech­no­lo­gies, pres­sure swing ad­sorp­tion (PSA), and sol­id sorb­ents are of­ten used for CO₂ re­mov­al in these pre-com­bus­tion sys­tems.

3. Oxy-com­bus­tion cap­ture
Oxy-com­bus­tion in­volves burn­ing fossil fuels in an en­vir­on­ment of pure oxy­gen (O₂) in­stead of air. This re­duces the pres­ence of ni­tro­gen in the flue gas, leav­ing primar­ily CO₂ and wa­ter va­pour as com­bus­tion byproducts. The wa­ter va­pour can be eas­ily con­densed, leav­ing a highly con­cen­trated stream of CO₂. 
The key com­pon­ent of an oxy-com­bus­tion sys­tem is the air sep­ar­a­tion unit (ASU), which gen­er­ates the pure oxy­gen re­quired. Fil­ters are es­sen­tial for re­mov­ing im­pur­it­ies from the in­com­ing air to pro­tect the ASU and en­sure ef­fi­cient oxy­gen pro­duc­tion.

Trans­port­a­tion and bey­ond

Fol­low­ing cap­ture, CO₂ is typ­ic­ally de­hyd­rated and com­pressed to high pres­sure for trans­port and stor­age. CO₂ post com­pres­sion is more com­monly re­ferred to as be­ing ‘Su­per­crit­ic­al’ or ‘Dense Phase’ state. Fil­tra­tion is es­sen­tial for ef­fi­ciency and safety dur­ing this pro­cess. 

Con­tam­in­ants such as wa­ter, lube oil, oxy­gen and hy­dro­gen sulph­ide (H₂S) present in the CO₂ can threaten pipeline in­teg­rity by caus­ing cor­ro­sion or pipeline block­ages. Sol­id cor­ro­sion products and pipe scale can also be car­ried down­stream, foul­ing crit­ic­al equip­ment such as con­trol valves, meter­ing sta­tions, and high-pres­sure in­jec­tion pumps. This in­creases main­ten­ance costs and can in­volve equip­ment re­place­ment or un­sched­uled down­time. Sol­id con­tam­in­ants can also plug per­meable stor­age reser­voir pore struc­tures, re­quir­ing in­creased en­ergy for CO₂ in­jec­tion and lim­it­ing the amount of avail­able reser­voir stor­age ca­pa­city.

Fig­ure 2 il­lus­trates where fil­tra­tion should be ap­plied dur­ing the su­per­crit­ic­al phase. In se­lect­ing fil­ters and sep­ar­at­ors for dense phase CO₂ ap­plic­a­tions, sub­stan­tial care must be taken over which ma­ter­i­als are used, how fil­ter siz­ing is per­formed, and the cor­rect fil­tra­tion rat­ing. To pro­tect reser­voirs, the fil­ter rat­ing must be se­lec­ted based on the reser­voir per­meab­il­ity and ap­prox­im­ate pore dia­met­er. 

What next for CCUS? 

Bet­ter fil­tra­tion equip­ment alone will not solve the chal­lenges of de­car­bon­ising in­dus­tri­al pro­cesses. No ‘stand­ard’ design for CCUS yet ex­ists and each ap­plic­a­tion will have unique pro­cess chal­lenges. This makes it dif­fi­cult to identi­fy the best fil­tra­tion tech­no­logy for the task. 

Clean­ova.C-CLEAN provides a solu­tion. This in­nov­at­ive ap­proach re­cog­nises that each pro­cess has unique para­met­ers and each cus­tom­er has spe­cif­ic needs and de­sired out­comes. It provides tailored fil­tra­tion solu­tions de­signed for each car­bon cap­ture pro­cess, based on the chosen meth­od, load quant­it­ies, type of con­tam­in­ants, CO₂ con­cen­tra­tion, pres­sure and tem­per­at­ure. The aim is to col­lab­or­ate with in­dus­tri­al cli­ents and CCUS op­er­at­ors from the earli­est concept stages, be­cause con­sid­er­ing fil­tra­tion re­quire­ments from the out­set, and with­in the con­text of the en­tire sys­tem design and busi­ness mod­el, will yield the best res­ults.

Con­clu­sion

The suc­cess­ful ad­apt­a­tion of ex­ist­ing tech­no­lo­gies such as fil­tra­tion to meet the spe­cif­ic re­quire­ments of CCUS op­er­a­tions is an on­go­ing pro­cess, and early col­lab­or­a­tion is cru­cial to the suc­cess of our de­car­bon­isa­tion jour­ney. Cor­rectly ap­plied, fil­tra­tion can achieve a high qual­ity end product that en­ables cap­tured CO₂ to be re­used in a vari­ety of mar­kets. 

Driv­ing down costs, op­tim­ising up­time, and de­liv­er­ing high qual­ity products are com­mon aims in any in­dus­tri­al ap­plic­a­tion. The cor­rect ap­plic­a­tion of fil­tra­tion in CCUS sys­tems con­trib­utes at every level and is crit­ic­al to achiev­ing glob­al de­car­bon­isa­tion.

This art­icle is based on the white­pa­per “Car­bon cap­ture, util­isa­tion and stor­age: a fil­tra­tion per­spect­ive”, which can be down­loaded here: ht­tps://www.clean­ova.com/ccuswhite­pa­per/