Strategic cooperation partnership

12 December 2008

Pepperl+Fuchs GmbH and Systec & Services GmbH have entered into a strategic partnership agreement with both a transfer of assets and intellectual property rights as well as an Industrial Cooperation Agreement to jointly market and sell their complementary HMI products and services expertise to the life science industry.

Pepperl+Fuchs is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of electronic sensors for the automation industries and world market leader for intrinsic safety and explosion protection technology. Within their Process Automation Division Pepperl+Fuchs also provides a wide range of industrial PCs & Monitor products used as Human Machine Interface (HMI) Systems for hazardous environments.

Systec & Services GmbH is a system integration house that offers comprehensive IT integration and production management solutions to the life science and regulated industries. As a full service provider they offer hardware products, software solutions and a broad range of services to automate and optimise production-related environments.

Within their GMP-IT business unit, Systec & Services has developed a number of elegant and innovative stainless steel platforms, industrial PC’s and remote panels specifically for the pharmaceutical production and clean room environment. As part of this agreement, Pepperl+Fuchs acquired the assets and intellectual property rights of the Slice product platform. “The Slice platform complements our Hazardous area HMI product portfolio” comments Dr. Gunther Kegel, CEO at Pepperl+Fuchs GmbH. “With our global presence and worldwide project pursuit activities also into the life science industries, we see a great demand and market opportunity for the Slice product platform which fulfills rigid specifications and GMP requirements of this regulated markets. This acquisition will further strengthen our strategic HMI portfolio development and supports our continuous growth in HMI systems into the process automation markets.”

The companies have also signed an Industrial Cooperation Agreement to jointly market their products and services to their current and future customers in the life science industries. “We are certain that our customers will greatly benefit from the combined products and services expertise Pepperl+Fuchs and Systec & Services can provide as a result of this partnership.” says Karl G. Linder, CEO and founder of Systec & Services. “Most of our customers operate and standardise their systems and solutions globally across their operations. With Pepperl+Fuchs’ international presence we will be able to service them accordingly”.

Before both companies have entered into today’s agreements, they have already positioned their products to each of their customer bases and as a result had sold a large number of systems into various projects over the last months. Thus the partnership has already proven multiple benefits and successes prior to signing agreements.