PI Match interview with Simon Coombs, business development director at Capula Ltd – an independent system integrator, specialising in solutions that combine automation control, real-time IT with electrical and instrumentation, and focused on the energy and utilities market sectors across the UK:

PIM How is the automation project pipeline flowing at the moment?

SC Overall, we continue to see automation projects coming to a close and a growing pipeline of opportunities across each of our market sectors. This is especially true for small and medium sized projects. However, we see some of our larger projects being delayed in approvals and it is momentum with these large projects that makes all the difference of course.

PIM Which sections of the markets served by Capula are most active, and why?

SC All our markets have on-going work on the back of increased investment in energy and infrastructure over the last few years within the UK. However, we measure activity in terms of new projects being let.

Power generation and renewable energy sectors are extremely active at the moment with a large increase in opportunities as clients' confidence increase with improved government incentives (to address future energy security of supply and carbon reduction targets), improved access to project finance, streamlined planning, etc.

Other markets are at a low in the delivery cycle. For example, the water industry coming towards the end of the current investment cycle (called AMP5) with new projects focusing on planning and conceptual design for the next investment period starting in a couple of years. This requires a different type of resource and structure to support these projects.

Similarly, the nuclear sector has delays in starting legacy improvement projects and also new build of the next generation of nuclear power stations. If you are involved in providing feasibility studies and conceptual design, however, there is plenty of advisory work for automation specialists.

PIM What other drivers or barriers are influencing project approvals at the moment?

SC Clients' business performance continues to be kept under close scrutiny. Therefore, even if our clients have strong balance sheets and good access to funding, they are not starting projects unless there is a clear and compelling business case. Obsolescence upgrades and interesting demonstrator projects that historically were done simply for engineering reasons are tending not to get approved.

The response in the marketplace is to ensure that each of our projects will lead to a clear benefit to the our clients' businesses with defined approaches to minimising delivery and operation risk. Of course, this is increasing the importance of effective automation control and real-time IT solutions that can really make a difference for our clients. It is also increasing the importance of having domain expertise and proven credentials - in addition to a good price, of course!

PIM Any other factors emerging that might impact on these markets going forward?

SC The general trend for automation and drives over recent years has been to procure standardised products from the main, global vendors in order to benefit from their on-going funding in research and development and access to common, standard solutions across diverse markets.

Our clients are under increasing pressure to reduce their costs, both for capital or operational expenditure. They are pushing this pressure down their supply chains and are therefore looking for innovative approaches that can decrease the delivery and the whole-life costs of solutions.

However, this is conflicting with the trend by large, global automation vendors to steadily increase the price of their products year on year in response to increasing energy, materials and manufacturing costs.

As system integrators we find ourselves in the squeezed middle between these conflicting pressures. Therefore, a future trend might be the re-emergence of bespoke, innovative products from smaller, nimble vendors that can provide more cost effective, albeit less standardised solutions, for our clients.

Thank you

Landia is a major manufacturer of: heavy-duty chopper pumps, submersible mixers, jet-aerators and advanced process units.

The company's products are in worldwide service in: Wastewater treatment plants, biogas plants, in agricultural farms, in the food and beverage industry and in the process industry.

Founded in 1933, the company has 80 years of experience in manufacturing high quality pumping and mixing equipment. Learn more about 'Landia - Pumping and Mixing Solutions - made in Denmark' on www.landia.co.uk

Landia Ltd
Waymills Industrial Estate Whitchurch, 
St. Shropshire SY13 1TT 
United Kingdom
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Phone: +44 (0) 194 8661 200 
Telefax: +44 (0) 194 8661 201 
http://www.landia.co.uk


Recent coverage on PI Match

A tri-company project representing the best of British innovation and application expertise has won the Robotics & Automation category of the Food Processing Awards 2013 - part of the annual Appetite for Engineering event for the food manufacturing industry

The winning project - decided by votes from readers of Food Processing magazine - combines multi-axis robotics, 3D vision technology and development and integration expertise to automate baked-product decoration.

The three companies involved were  robot technology provider Mitsubishi Electric, Scorpion Vision which provided a 3D machine vision system and Quasar Automation, which provides solutions for challenging applications in food manufacturing.

Explaining the winning baked-product icing system, Jeremy Shinton of Mitsubishi said the non-uniform shape of many food products makes applying decoration, such as piped icing, very much a manual task.

“Mitsubishi Electric and Scorpion Vision have teamed up with Quasar Automation to create a decorative depositing method that takes into account the irregular shapes but maintains the depositor at a constant height above the work piece," said Shinton.

"With such accuracy the decorative icing is applied in a repeatable way. This allows the optimum time for the icing to set, often a critical issue in real-world production processes,” he added.

In taking the Grangemouth operation to the brink, Ineos' billionaire main owner Jim Ratclffe essentially posed the question: 'Do you want to have a petrochemicals plant here and the thousands of jobs and massive contribution to GDP that go with it ... or not?'

This proposal led to an embarrassing retreat by leaders of trade union Unite, who had previously disputed the need for the company's 'survival plan' for Grangemouth.

However, there should also be some red faces among the political leaders, who scurried to come up with an improved support package to help Ineos establish a £300-million terminal to import US shale gas at the site.

They have contributed more than the unions to the crisis at Grangemouth - and at many other refinery and petchem facilities around the EU.

Whatever spin is put on things, European industry remains hobbled by environmental costs way in excess of those in competitor countries around the world.

Meanwhile, UK and EU leaders are, at best, dragging their feet over the development of shale gas that is giving the US and, increasingly, developing countries such as China, huge energy- and feedstock-cost advantages over European producers.

Taking Ratliffe's lead, industry should ask those in the corridors of power in Westminster and Brussels, and indeed the wider public, if they really want to continue to have a chemicals and refining industry in the EU, or not?

If the answer is - as the 'greens' would have it - 'no' then the obvious step is to focus future investment and employment elsewhere.

If it's 'yes', then let's see some real support for shale and a level playing field when it comes to environmental costs and requirements.

Atlas Copco UK

Atlas Copco UK is part of the Atlas Copco industrial group, a major global supplier of compressors, expanders and air treatment systems, construction and mining equipment, power tools and assembly systems. 

Founded in 1873, the group is based in Stockholm, Sweden, and has a global reach spanning about 180 countries. In 2012, Atlas Copco had 39 800 employees and revenues of Euro10.5 billion. The group is listed on the NASDAQ OMX Stockholm exchange.

Contact

Atlas Copco UK
Hemel Hempstead
Hertfordshire 
HP2 7EA
Tel+44 (0)845 601 0001
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Company website - external link
 
Latest Coverage of Atlas Copco on PI Match:

Precision engineering firm adds energy-saving VSD compressor - Read more

Compressed air filters raise efficiency, lower pressure drop - Read more

Ubisense tracking real-time growth - Read more


Selected company press releases  (links to external site)

- Screw blower technology improves efficiency and energy savings at SCA mill’s waste water plant (Read)

- Atlas Copco compressors power UK’s largest compressed natural gas vehicle filling station (Read)

- Atlas Copco takes energy efficiency of centrifugal compressors to the next level  (Read)

- Atlas Copco showcases innovative vacuum pump and on-site nitrogen generation solutions at Pro2Pac  (Read)

 

Within the UK process sector, demands for excellence, innovation, invention, R&D and new product and process design are now the leading imperatives so all companies should be aware of the powerful and increasingly valuable corporate tax incentive now available.

Qualification for R&D Tax credits as an SME (up to 500 employees) and large companies (LC) is simply to be registered as a UK company and be a going concern.

So all companies and the broadest ranges of activities are covered.  Opportunities for the process industries are clearly among the most eligible for tax credits. The options are manifest. 

If you are part of these industries, examine everything you do as a start to identifying those elements large and small, signification seemingly trivial that give your activities, products and processes their commercial, technical and functional edge. 

Do not doubt or underestimate your own ability to undertake R&D even when, possibly, you didn’t realise you were doing it anyway!  Don’t be over interpretive as to what might constitute R&D for this purpose.

If research and development leads to patent IP possibilities, you can claim additionally via the ten-per-cent Patent Tax Box scheme.

Take-up of R&D Tax Credits is relatively small. In some ways it is a disappointment to the Government that more companies have not taken this opportunity to develop and make R&D part of their normal operational structure. 

Key drivers’ for all directors and their key executives to look at are:
• Identifying the actual wide scope and definition of what is likely to be accepted as R&D.  HMRC’s CIRD Guidelines refer generally; however, interpretation is required.
• You can claim the last two accounting periods 2011- 2012; the current year 2013 and then year-on-year.   The scheme encourages continuity and commitment.
• Identified R&D should be briefly and accurately written up to indicate research and development with relevance to your accounting periods.
• Don’t be over-ambitious and attempt to identify too much, concentrate on the small, seemingly marginal effects of design, research, test, trialling, innovation, prototypes, failures, successes and those key inputs, changes, adaptions, materials and spark-of genius or luck that created a new or better way. Begin to think R&D.
• Identify all key people likely to be involved in any way with R&D or activities involving innovation, meeting clients, technical, cost-efficiency and functional demands.  These must be your key drivers who are also likely to be directly or indirectly involved with what you need to identify and associate as R&D.
• A driver is not to forget or miss the accounting period deadlines.  This is expensive if missed.

The outlook for R&D Tax Credits is now good.  It is here to stay and to be part of the UK drive for speciality products and processes.  Resolve to get involved. Specialist assistance is available and you should seek it to get going and create an internal model to recover or save taxes going forward.

Greville Warwick Director
MSC Corporate Strategies Ltd
www.msc-corporate.com
01926 512 475

Many manufacturers across Europe and, indeed in all world regions, are still using Windows XP within their organisations, - even though Microsoft will stop supporting the operating system from 8 April 2014.

Growing concern over cyber security, however, is likely to force these companies to upgrade sooner rather than later, particularly as Microsoft will no longer write security patches for any new vulnerabilities that emerge. 

Following the Stuxnet and Shamoon attacks in the region, Middle East countries are taking a lead on this issue.

Under a recent decree in Saudi Arabia, for example, companies will have to upgrade to Windows 7 and Windows 2008 from this December, reported Jay Abdallah of Invensys' cyber security team for the EMEA region.

This follows an earlier mandate by the Saudi rulers requiring every single plant to have 'demilitarised-zone' protection against cyber attacks since July 2013, Abdallah explained in a recent presentation on cyber security developments in London.

Otherwise, Saudi-based companies lost connectivity to the corporate network, preventing them from sharing emails, scanning the web or sharing alarms or historian data.

"The people that are going to be most affect are those higher up," said Abdallah. "The operators will still be able to run the plant but they won't be able to share any data with the corporate network."

These measures are clearly justified, Abdallah noting that since 2010, there has been a 600% increase in industrial control system and SCADA vulnerabilities.

"I have never seen that in 15 years of tracking," said the IT expert, noting that the attackers are increasingly targeting oil refineries and other critical infrastructure facilities, including an average  of 10,000 cyber attacks a month on power companies,

"These days, these are very targeted attacks with specific knowledge of a vendor or a platform. They are bringing in experts or ex-employees that know the industrial control system, PLC or SCADA system inside out to achieve complete infiltration. It is no longer a drive-by shooting, it is targeted at specific company."

The Shamoon virus, for example, hit three Middle East energy companies. Spread by USB then Microsoft auto-propagation services it affected around 42,000 systems, causing millions of dollars worth of damage. The attack hit only the corporate level domain and did not disrupt industrial control systems.

While Shamoon was written by amateurs, Abdallah said Stuxnet was written by experts for one specific SCADA system to cause physical damage to a nuclear centrifuge in Iran.

By telling the operator all was well even though the equipment was spinning to a point of destruction, it delayed Iran's nuclear programme for at least two years, he said.

The worrying thing, continued Abdallah, is that these viruses or malware programmes are now so sophisticated that they can actually sit dormant for an average of five years  before they are ever detected.

He concluded: "If the technology is not up to date to track the newest versions of the threats, then we may never know that there is something wrong with the environment.

"The question is not re we ready for the latest attacks, but rather are we ready for what has already happened."