UPBEAT OUTLOOK AT PITTCON

Abstract

SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENT company executives at the Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry & Applied Spectroscopy (Pittcon) last week in Orlando, Fla., said the business outlook is much more promising now than at this time last year during the depths of the recession. Customer uncertainty that pervaded last year’s Pittcon has ebbed, observed John A. Roush, president of PerkinElmer’s environmental health business. “We are now seeing the beginning of a recovery,” he said. Still, to capture customers on the fence about buying instruments, firms are promoting what Bruker Corp., for instance, described as “affordable, rock-solid” equipment. Many executives are disappointed that government stimulus spending hasn’t had as big an impact on their bottom lines as they’d originally hoped. But they anticipate stimulus dollars will continue to be spent on scientific instruments in 2010. Waters Corp. received “limited” stimulus money last year, said Rohit Khanna, vice president of marketing, but he hopes for more th...