The right vision STEMMER IMAGING

the right viSion

STEMMER IMAGING is one of Europe’s leading machine vision technology providers for science and industry. The company has gone through some significant changes over the last few years, further cementing its leading position in Europe and beyond, as UK Managing Director Mark Williamson explained to Romana Moares.

STEMMER IMAGING offers the optimum combination of innovative products, intelligent consulting and extensive service, all coming together to provide a complete solution.

As a provider of industrial machine vision systems and components, such as cameras, optics, illumination, cabling and especially its proprietary software, the company has built a strong position in the dynamically growing market.

The German based company reached an important milestone in 2018. Its founder, Wilhelm Stemmer, handed over responsibility for the family business and sold his shares to SI HOLDING GmbH, a company of the PRIMEPULSE SE Group, and several of the company managers.

The change in ownerships was not the only key event. On 22 January 2018, the company announced the placement of new and existing ordinary shares as part of an initial public offering in the Scale segment of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange’s Open Market. “We are now a public company. The issue proceeds are intended to be used to implement the company’s ambitious plans for expansion and innovation. In particular, we plan to strengthen our competitive position in the European market, to make targeted use of growth potential in Asia and to develop innovative products, solutions and services.” said Mr Williamson.

“The floatation enabled us to execute a growth strategy - we have acquired two additional companies, the French ELVITEC and Dutch Datavision, both specialist in advanced imaging and machine vision solutions. In addition we invested in Perception Park, an innovative software provider focused on hyperspectral imaging based in Austria,” he says, adding that in the last financial year, STEMMER IMAGING achieved an outstanding financial performance of over €100 million in turnover.

Novel applications

Mr Williamson says that the company is continuing to develop its product portfolio through both third-party products, creating vision subsystems for OEM’s and creation of proprietary software solutions.

He explains that vision technology does not only achieve extraordinary results in industrial applications, it is also very useful in other areas: “Our products are applied in sports, traffic, broadcast and other fields, demonstrating the wide range of use. For

example, together with Hawk-Eye Innovations, we have delivered imaging technology for the decision review systems used internationally in sports such as cricket and tennis and for goal line technology in football.”

“In industry, machine vision technology has been applied mostly in automated inspection but there is still a massive market with manual assembly. We have launched a new product at the beginning of this years in partnership with Ricoh - a ‘human assistance’ camera that offers a different approach, where the power of industrial vision is deployed during the assembly process to ensure that each and every action is carried out correctly and completely before the operator can move on to the next step.”

unique position

STEMMER IMAGING has capitalised on not only the efficiencies of being one of the largest machine vision suppliers across Europe but also the level of value add we provide to our customers. “As we are Europe wide, we can afford to hold €9 million worth of stock, which means that the probability of having a product available for the next day delivery is very high compared to smaller single country companies.”

“The other thing that sets us apart is the depth of knowledge. We employ over 300 people across Europe of whom 70 per cent are technically qualified. Our average depth of knowledge is immense; this allows us to have experts with specialist in-depth skills enabling to deliver optimized solutions for customers. And our third strength is our ability to do service. If a customer wants a modification or sub systems integration of components, we can do that quickly and exactly as he requires.”

Mr Williamson explains that despite the general shortage of technical skills in the European market, the company is able to hire the right people. “Being market leaders does mean people want to work for us however we work hard to bring young talent in to the company. We have good links to schools and run STEM days to motivate school children to be inspired by what technology can accomplish. We have apprenticeships in many locations and offer work placements for university students, many of whom we hire. We have a very high staff

retention rate - and even if people leave, many return after gaining other work experiences. We are a good company to work for, a caring organisation that values its staff greatly.”

Set to grow

The company’s strongest market continues to be Europe but Mr Williamson admits that opportunities further afield are also in the viewfinder. “We have recently signed an agreement with a company in China to promote our business in that huge market. Still, our strategy is to expand within Europe. We have nine European countries covered now and want to increase that reach.”

Increasing digitalisation and the trend towards greater automation across industry sectors truly plays into STEMMER’s hands. Machine vision and imaging solutions are key technologies for Industry 4.0 and smart factories. “The OPC UA machine vision working group released the first versions of their companion specifications just about a year ago and I’m proud to say that our CVB machine vision library is one of the first to meet the specification. We offer software products that make machines compatible with the Industry 4.0 concept.”

The countless applications of industrial camera technology and machine vision solutions provide STEMMER IMAGING with significant opportunities for growth. “With the flotation last year we are well placed to invest in not only product development and acquisitions but also in internal systems that will deliver new and more efficient ways to specify machine vision systems and interact with the company. The future possibilities for machine vision technology is exciting and we are well positioned to continue to lead this growing market by serving more regions, adding new technologies and providing more services to make the adoption of this technology easier.” concludes Mr Williamson. n