Interview with Marc Delgado, director general of Sensotran
April 1, 2009
Tell us briefly what has been the route of the company through these almost 20 years of work...
My father founded Sensotran in 1990, after being life dedicated to the detection of gases. The company where I worked and who had founded was absorbed by a Swiss multinational, and after disagreements and maintain two years of no competition again founded his own project. At the beginning Sensotran was just the detection of levels of liquids and solids, and after two years began to distribute in Spain a French brand we leave after a while because of the problems that created us the double representation that had to be done in Barcelona and Madrid. It was then when we seek to our represented next, Rae Systems, with whom we began to work in 1997, and from 2000 the company registered a significant growth rate. Exactly two years before, and with a grant Atyca of the Ministry of industry, develop a new flameproof gas detector with digital display and calibration with remote infrared.
In 2004, Rae Systems is set to Spain, and makes it through our own, with a new society, SAR Spain, that it secretes portable detectors of the fixed business, maintaining the Delgado family shareholder control of this new company. The part of Sensotran continues to develop detectors fixed, with considerable success in universities and small installations.
What is the requirement for a client when it comes to you to hire a service?
As a small company we are focused to total customer satisfaction. We can have a very good team, but if you don't have a good service we cannot compete against the large companies in the market. My view is that a good team with a bad service, is a bad product. Why are committed to the excellence of our technical service as well as adapt to the specific needs you may have our client. Flexible and tailor-made solutions are the advantages that it gives us being a small company.
There is much competition in the market that moves Sensotran?
On the peninsula, and saving very localised companies, are about five companies which we can compare competitively, and the truth is that, for example, in the market of fixed detectors we have a very good position in the market.
At some point have an expansion beyond Spain and Portugal be raised?
Thanks to the Internet opens a new world, and we have in mind to expand to the South American market and also to other countries of southern Europe, but always from our policy go step by step and a well defined strategy. Currently we are running out of mature and consolidated in the Iberian market.
Now, how would you rate the rules governing a sector as strict as the safety facilities in which we work with toxic gases?
Oddly enough, it's a completely anarchic sector. For example, a factory of the chemical industry is not obliged to have any type of gas detector, while there are other venues such as the Chambers of compressors of ammonia that have a specific regulation, and that meet the file installing simple detectors to pass the revisions. If companies invest in detectors is by an act of risks at work that requires them to maintain conditions of safety and health best for workers with the precept of vale more prevention than cure, because they have to control the emission of gases and also because insurance fees are lower than if they have a few measures correct security.
In these times of crisis, have they noticed that companies want to save in security?
It is saving in all fields, and also in security. Possibly not as in other matters, but people if you can not renew a team change the parts needed and expected better times for major investments. Currently we have several projects unemployed because of the economic crisis.
Investment in r & d
Since the beginning, one of the lines of action has been the development and innovation of new products at the domestic level and in collaboration with other institutions. What are the projects in which Sensotran is involved?
Now we are six months after end of the project 'nano2hybrids'. A project for three years at the European level, in that with six universities, among them the Rovira Virgili in Tarragona, and funded by the FP6 European Union programme, a specific sensor for selective detection of low parts is developing hydrocarbons trillion. Behind this project is a patent, it can be, if the product is marketed, which we definitely project worldwide, and which therefore make us completely change the structure of the company in the medium term.
We have also devoted much effort to project GasVisor32, which we present on the occasion of the latest edition of Expoquimia. A central control multi channel 32 tracks, incorporating the most advanced technology available today, facilitating the connection of wireless sensors. We have devoted much time and money to bring to market a product that allows customer to save a number of important costs for the installation.
Is there some other project portfolio for the future?
Currently pending the start of a trans-Pyrenean project, together with the University of Rovira i Virgili of Tarragona, the University of Navarra and the University of Bordeaux, to detect a series of compounds found in bottles of wine Cork Stoppers. It is a project for two years, already has been awarded, and that is pending to holding the first meeting.
