Patents, investment spurs next phase of Yarmouth co.'s growth
Courtesy of Fluid Imaging Technologies
Kent Peterson, president and CEO of the Yarmouth-based Fluid Imaging Technologies, says the company is looking to expand this year as development of the company's flagship particle imaging device — the FlowCAM — continues with new patents.
Yarmouth-based Fluid Imaging Technologies is entering 2013 with a slate of new patents and $4 million in private investment that is expected to expand the market for the company's flagship particle imaging and analysis system.
Company President and CEO Kent Peterson says the first of those patents, an add-on to the company's FlowCAM system approved Jan. 1, will help support new hires over the next year and expand the company's reach beyond the 35 countries where it has already logged sales. In 2010, the company counted sales in just over a dozen foreign countries.
"These patents will cement our leadership role in the dynamic imaging particle analysis market," Peterson says.
The Maine-based laboratory equipment manufacturer makes products and technology used in applications ranging from municipal water quality analysis to the oil and pharmaceutical industries.
Coming off of another strong year in 2012, the company expanded its office twice and saw its 13th consecutive year of sales growth. Peterson expects continued development of the FlowCAM in 2013 will support 10 new hires, for a total of 40 employees, and that acquisitions might also be in the company's future. The infusion of capital came from 16 individual private investors.
The latest patent marks the company's first add-on for the FlowCAM, which is used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Welch's Foods, the Massachusetts Water Authority and other organizations to detect, image and evaluate particles and cells faster and more accurately than a microscope.
The new add-on is designed to detect particles exhibiting birefringence, or double refraction of light. The new technology isolates birefringent particles while blocking others, making for easier, less-cluttered particle analysis.
The technology is particularly well-suited to applications in analyzing food ingredients, plastic resin, fibers, abrasives, crystals and some mussel larvae, according to Peterson.
"This can be used in everything from therapeutic drugs to the oil and gas industry and the analysis of nano-fossils during the offshore oil drilling process," he says.
Across those industries, Peterson says use of particle analysis technology is becoming more commonplace. And new applications occur regularly.
"The dynamic image particle analysis technology, which Fluid Imaging pioneered, is now becoming mainstream," Peterson says.
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