measured to perfection Cerulean

mEasuREd To PERfECTIon

Cerulean is a manufacturer and supplier of quality control instrumentation, test and measuring equipment for leading global customers. Following a change in ownership, the company is now looking to increase its presence worldwide. Romana Moares spoke to Ian Tindall, Head of Marketing, about recent business development, new products and emerging market opportunities.

For more than 70 years, Cerulean has been synonymous with the supply of precision test and measurement equipment solutions for the tobacco industry. Based in the UK in its single manufacturing plant in Milton Keynes, the company runs a worldwide operation, generating 98 per cent of its sales in export markets. “We have a number of service centres based globally, notably in Singapore, USA, India and Shanghai, and are expanding with workshops in Turkey and Algeria,” says Ian Tindall, adding that the company also has a number of ‘home-based’ engineers in an additional 11 countries and expects to expand this list by at least two more countries in the next few months.

Last year, Cerulean was acquired by G.D SpA, a wholly owned subsidiary of the COESIA group, a privately owned entity headquartered in Italy. “The new owner fully supports our global expansion,” says Ian Tindall. “We have begun to work closely with G.D and share market intelligence, sales leads and overseas facilities to better serve a common customer base.”

Accurate and sustainable

Cerulean is essentially a metrology company, providing equipment that measures physical and some chemical properties. “The company is very much grounded in the tobacco business and for over 50 years we have provided physical testing equipment and smoking machines used in the QA of cigarette manufacture. In fact, we can trace our history back to 1945 although the company name and ownership has changed a number of times since that date,” says Mr Tindall, explaining that the tobacco industry is highly regulated and geographically diverse but with a strong set of product standards that have to be met. “Working within this environment has become a particular talent of the Cerulean business,” he affirms.

In the course of its development, the company has diversified into other regulated markets with testing equipment for cartons and air samplers used in the detergent business. Its reach was further expanded by the recent acquisition of a unique product that safely and accurately measures the temperature of frozen and chilled foods. Cerulean showcased this accurate and sustainable equipment, Celsius, at the Birmingham NEC in April.

“Current methods involve pushing a probe into the food under test after blast chilling or freezing and hoping that the probe is in a representative place. The food then has to be thrown away, the packaging removed and recycled or disposed of and the cycle repeats. With Celsius, the product is placed in a box and the average temperature of the product displays after a few seconds. The product can then be removed and sold. The capital investment is greater for a Celsius than for a probe but the payback can normally be met in three to six months with higher degrees of accuracy and full traceability of measurements.”

In response to new demands

“Another innovation is our first foray into Industry 4.0 with a product called Konexis, which we think of as a 24-hour on-site engineer. This is a proactive tool that can be used to maximise up-time on the Cerulean test stations and minimise unnecessary service and maintenance. We see this as a win-win for the customers and Cerulean as it allows us to better manage our engineers and spares holding, whilst for the customer it reduces the cost of ownership.

“Customers are becoming less involved in their metrology equipment – they just want it to work. We use the ‘health’ data of the equipment and the calibration data to anticipate maintenance requirements and also in the event of a failure provide immediate diagnosis. The model we want to get to is that of a photocopier – it tells you what to do before it goes wrong and if it does fail it tells you how to fix it. Part of our approach is to use cloud-based data analytics to not only give this information locally but also have plant-wide summaries/data dashboards or enterprise-wide dashboards .We think that the adding of this end-to-end care of Cerulean metrology equipment goes beyond a traditional capital purchase or B2B relationship within our industry and begins to align Cerulean more closely to the business aspirations of our customers.”

Cerulean has a strong, and growing, R&D team. As stated by Mr Tindall, 20 per cent of new equipment sales should come from products released to market in the last two years. “Generally speaking, there are two major product releases each year and 10 minor product enhancements. We have plans to release something quite revolutionary at the end of the year that is specifically directed at the new vaping and heat not burn products that have been released on the market. As the technology is in the process of being patented I cannot say much more except ‘watch this space!’

He further reflects that while until about five years ago cigarettes were more or less the same for decades, now the market looks very different. “The advent of e-cigarettes has prompted us to make a

new class of vaping products – mostly sold in Europe and the USA – one of which, the Chimera, is a radical continuous vapour generator for in-vitro toxicology studies. We are also developing products to serve the so-called ‘Heat Not Burn’ products released by companies such as BAT, PMI and JT. They need a whole new set of testing machines and we are rapidly developing a suite of physical and vaping machines for these applications.”

Success based on partnership

Cerulean has a network of reliable supplies who act as partners in terms of technology integration. “The list of companies we work with is long but I will name just a few. Our local supplier, SMC, which actually has a desk in our factory, supplies us with pneumatics. It is instrumental in ensuring we have the best cost benefits from our equipment,” says Mr Tindall.

“We also value greatly the work with Micro Epsilon, which supplies laser metrology components that have extended and improved our product range, and Innoark, a Singapore-based company that we have partnered with to start to deliver some of the data analytics and predictive maintenance advantages of Industry 4.0. And last but not least, Omron – with whom we have only just started working, looking to re-vamp one of our product and replace some older technology with an Omron-based system. That this company is headquartered within 2km of our site really helps this!”

In conclusion, Mr Tindall confirms that the future looks promising. “In light of the many new opportunities round the corner, we are targeting a growth of 50 per cent in the next few years. Given that we expect further growth of the tobacco sector, while also boosting our non-tobacco business, and given the financial backing and support of our new owner, I believe this target is achievable.” n

Ian Tindall, Head of marketing