Australia and New Zealand on display at Pittcon

Day three at Pittcon - I truanted from the press conferences and 'did' the exhibition. 1090 exhibitors, 55 symposia, 115 oral sessions, 80 poster sessions, 118 short courses. This conference and exhibition has something for everyone.

About 90% of the companies exhibiting at the conference are US, with the next largest contingent being 39 Canadian companies. Germany and the United Kingdom have 30 and 27 exhibitors respectively. There are 19 Japanese companies and 17 from China — after that we are down to single figures.

Australia and New Zealand have a small but noticeable presence.

GBC Scientific and SGE, which both began in Melbourne, are among the larger exhibitors as both companies export most of their equipment.

Syft Technologies is New Zealand’s only exhibitor but its real-time VOC analyser, the Voice200 SIFT-MS instrument, is generating a lot of interest.

Melbourne-based Glass Expansion is enhancing its international reputation with its ‘best in the world’ range of ICP-OES and ICP-MS nebulisers, spray chambers, torches, RF coils and ICP-MS cones.

Narre Warren local company Photron, a leading manufacturer of AAS light sources including hollow cathode lamps and deuterium lamps and glass subcomponents, is also having a successful time at Pittcon.

With the current interest in mining, minerals and elemental analysis, Perth company IMP Group is stirring up lots of interest with its fully automated robotic sample preparation and analytical laboratories for the mining and metal industries. The company has already delivered the largest automated fire assay laboratory (AngloPlatinum), the largest automated iron ore XRF laboratory (BHPBIO) and the largest automated wet chemistry laboratory (Freeport) in Australia, Africa and America.

NIR Technologies’ expertise in food analysis is proving popular and two first-time exhibitors at Pittcon, Aqua Diagnostic and Intellection, both have equipment ranges that are creating a lot of interest.

Aqua Diagnostics is appealing to the environmentalists with its real-time COD analyser, while Intellection’s integrated solutions and services for the automated, quantitative analysis of minerals, rocks, metals and other compounds based on its QEMSCAN technology is also finding interest.

It is very encouraging to see Australian and New Zealand ingenuity and expertise make the world’s experts take notice. Now I just need a footbath to recover from all the walking.

Janette Woodhouse