Instrument vendors’ outlook at Pittcon is partly cloudy

Pittcon, an analytical instrument conference and trade show, met in Boston this week. The event convenes scientists and vendors in the biopharmaceutical, chemical manufacturing, oil and gas, water quality, and food and beverage industries, along with service providers that cross industries, such as vendors of lab furniture and software. At the same time as the conference, a trade war between the US and its largest trading partners, China, Canada and Mexico, began to unfold. Company representatives at Pittcon said it was too early to comment—but instrument distributors with international North American divisions were watching with concern. A more common topic of discussion on the expo floor was the US market and the government’s cuts to science funding. There, vendors’ concern seemed to correlate with their degree of exposure to federal funding. “The government industry, obviously, is a little sticky right now,” says Robert Voelkner, vice president of sales and marketing at LabVantage, a company that sells laboratory information systems and related software. “They’ve gone kind of dark and quiet, so things are very unsettling there.” Yet Voelkner says that while funding for clients in forensic laboratories and grant-supported university labs in the US is a concern, business in other sectors has not been affected. In an uncertain US market, instrument companies may choose to prioritize industries with better prospects. “Our strategy has been focusing on the higher-growth sectors that are more robust in this type of environment,” such as batteries, defense, aerospace, and robotics, says Yu Cheng, a vice president of product solutions and R&D in the TA Instruments division at Waters. Cheng says that Waters hopes to sell versatile, modular instruments to maximize customers’ investments.