Incorporated in 2006 Shimadzu Analytical India is a wholly owned subsidiary of Shimadzu Asia Pacific, Singapore, and is committed to create history – moment by moment. Shimadzu India family, which includes its partners Toshvin Analytical, Spinco Biotech, Swan Environmental, Saksham Analytical and Amkette Analytics, has the largest network in the industry with over 400 people in the field. For the food industry, it has a focus team of about 50 technical personnel including specialists in its customer support centre lab in Mumbai and Delhi. Food quality and safety is one its important area of focus besides measuring instruments, medical systems, industrial equipment and aircraft equipment. Shimadzu India has a wide range of products to offer. Right from balances to UV spectrophotometers, FTIR systems, atomic absorption spectrophotometers, ICP systems, along with complete range of liquid and gas chromatography systems, a strong range of mass spectrometry systems and TOC analysers for water quality testing. The company also offers texture analysers for food industry. With such complete range it can offer total solution for food analysis.
In an email interaction with NuFFooDS Spectrum Senya Imamichi, Managing Director, Shimadzu Analytical (India), shared his thoughts about market trends and opportunity for the company in the coming years. Excerpts:
What kind of competition do you see among the technology providers?
Shimadzu has been serving food industry in India for about three decades and have the advantage of being in the market well ahead of competition. We are the one who provide ready solutions with strong after sales support. Applications support and training support are important factors where we are ahead of competition.
How do you for see the growth of food and beverage business?
Food testing segment is among the high growth business area for us. We have seen very encouraging response for our new range of LC-MS- MS and GC-MS-MS which are built under novel UFMS concept. With regulations and new food testing norms, we see increasing demand in all sub segments such as private testing labs, nutraceuticals, spices, agro and marine exporters, functional foods and also food research institutions. Every sub segment is expected to see growth as well.
Who are your key buyers for the range of products on offer?
We have several customers who are in herbal extracts for medicinal as well as nutritional. Almost all major private players are our users and we also see many mid-size organisations investing for setting up in-house analytical facility. Growth is also seen in government sectors such as state food labs and university and research institutions working on food research.
Within food and beverage industry where do you see growth?
We expect the private testing labs and government funded institutions and research laboratories to grow in double digit.
What are the key issues that need attention of regulatory agencies?
Food safety has gained a lot of sig- nificance for consumers, government and regulatory bodies as well as companies providing solutions for facilitating food safety technology. Development of technologically advanced and innovation based instrumentation would definitely need to be backed by strong R&D which in turn needs to be supported by a rich infrastructure and involve huge investment. Reconsideration and amendment in government policies to support an economic environment, that would be more conducive to encourage multinational companies to set up manufacturing facilities, could definitely help make the technology more accessible at lower cost as compared to imports.