Manufacturing Today Issue - 222 March 2024 | Page 42

Exclusive Feature ______________________________________________________________________________________________
To accelerate our offering , we ’ re open to future acquisitions within the market that would enable us to launch metal welding projects at a much bigger scale
production of such equipment across all the entities . We also established a purchasing group for agents from each entity to report to and exchange sales or application information . As a collective , the team gets faster lead times , better pricing , and access to worldwide contracts with major manufacturers .
“ Our most recent acquisition was in 2017 , when we took over the piezo division of California-based company , Channel Technologies Group . This specific company produced several piezo ceramic elements and assemblies , which positively changed our product offering and enabled us to go after some of the underwater sonar jobs within the defense sector . Today , the company is a leading US manufacturer of small and specialty piezoelectric ceramic elements .
Turning to Crest ’ s current operations , Brian explains : “ Within the group , we ’ re working to bring our ultrasonic cleaning brands together under the Crest Ultrasonics name .
KLN Ultraschall sells equipment throughout Europe , for example , while CC Hydrosonics sells in the UK , Northern Europe , and Canada , and Martin Water operates in Germany ; as they all market and sell similar products , it makes sense to condense the brands .
“ While Crest Ultrasonics is a successful brand across the US and Asia , it is relatively unknown in Europe . Through a huge marketing push , we ’ re focusing on promoting the activities of Crest Ultrasonics in these geographies , and we ’ re excited to witness growth in these areas over the coming years from the Crest Europe Team .
“ We ’ re changing our marketing strategy on the cleaning side of the business in Europe too , with an aim to better reflect our solvents offering . Our new product , SolvaClean , is a vapor degreaser solvent that can directly replace 3M ’ s retired products , Novec 73DE and 72DA . However , it is not only used to clean parts of solvent machinery , but it ’ s also a great heat transfer fluid that works like antifreeze in your car , just on an industrial scale . Although heat transfer isn ’ t necessarily our area of expertise , we ’ re finding that customers increasingly use our solvent product for this purpose , so we ’ re also occupying a place in this market .
“ We ’ re also launching a new vacuum degreaser ,” he reveals . “ Although our solvent degreasers are already some of the best in the industry in terms of emissions , this new product will completely eliminate hydrocarbon emissions and also PFAS ( perand polyfluoroalkyl substances ) emissions with patented technology that contains all the solvent within the system . With certain regions like Germany and Southern California
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