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ITS in 2022 | CEO Review
As we’re now well into 2023, we wanted to take time to reflect on the past year. We recently caught up with ITS CEO Ken Primrose to get his key takeaways from a successful 2022.
Industrial Tomography Systems (ITS) continues as a high-growth, vibrant, high-technology company, and we’re proud to report a turnover growth of 45% from 2021 to 2022.
Our customers
Around 75% of our business is from our valued existing customers returning to buy new systems, with the remaining 25% coming from new customers. ITS continues to operate internationally, with orders from 11 countries; the table being topped by China, the Netherlands, Australia and the USA.
One reason so many of our customers return to buy new systems is the quality of our post-sales service. Last month we published a separate review of service for 2022, but in summary, the figures speak for themselves:
- no instrument warranty issues and only 1 sensor warranty return
- 382 customer queries
- 100% customer service satisfaction.
- 98% system satisfaction rating
In 2023 we will be piloting an online user meeting – look out for the save the date soon. The objective is to allow users to share their experiences with our systems over a diverse range of applications. We look forward to the event and getting customer feedback.
Our people
ITS is a great place to work, as demonstrated by a remarkable staff retention rate of 95%. And with several new additions to the team, 2022 has been a year of team stability and growth. The team has maintained its education profile (38% with Doctorates and 22% with Masters). We place a high emphasis on training, and in 2022 36% of the team attended external training courses to further develop their careers.
An overview of our people during 2022 would be incomplete without mentioning that our employee number 1, Principal Engineer, Changhua Qiu, retired after many years of loyal service. Much of the pioneering work at ITS in tomography and densitometry has been down to Changhua, who still retains a strong interest in how we build on her pioneering work.
R&D at ITS
The investment ITS has made in ongoing R & D is being translated into product sales growth. This has been achieved through greater penetration of the global dredging and sub-sea mining markets with our Dens-Itometer system, as well as ongoing sales into academia and research establishments.
In 2022 we expanded our R&D team with the appointment of Engineer Dr John Alamani, whose focus is on instrument firmware and testing.
Summer 2022 saw the installation of our own in-house flow loop capable of testing ERT systems with diameters of 25mm, 50m and 100mm, with a range of products including slurry. We will soon publish a more complete news article on this new capability.
We are working with a number of customers on OEM applications where ITS ERT and density measurement is included in a third-party product; the first of these being launched during 2023.
2023 and beyond
In 2023 we see no let-up in this accelerated growth, with new developments in density measurement and further investment in team growth in the works. Longer term R&D programmes will continue to push the limits of both ERT and ECT technology.
It is great that the pandemic is not the first topic of this year’s review. We started 2022 with most of the team working in the office but still significant travel restrictions. As we start 2023, travel has mostly opened up and the supply chain issues we saw at the start of the year are mostly resolved. We hope that 2023 continues in the same direction.
2022 has been a year of accelerated growth and development; we’re excited for further acceleration.
Ken Primrose | ITS CEO
