Voxstone CEO Tommi Peltomäki was invited to pitch in Lahti last week. Voxstone, a spin-off from VTT has developed and patented VoxTracs , which are acoustic measuring devices that accurately monitor gas flows in industrial applications. VoxTrac (in the picture) can also make measurements in difficult conditions, which existing electronic technologies cannot do realiably. In addition to making it possible to optimize the biogas production process, proper monitoring can also lead to energy savings. When used to measure and optimize compressed air production in industrial facilities, the energy costs savings can be €10 – 20k annually. Tommi and his team have been developing the product since 2008. Their next step is to set up a sales network in the EU, Asia and the USA to accelerate revenue growth with a target of increasing net profits by 30% – 40% by 2011.
Advanced flow meters like VoxTrac represent over half of the global $700m market. Voxtone’s primary market segments are process and biogas monitoring, which are also very high growth segments. The global market for biogas and biogas plants was €2b in 2006 and is expected to be over €25b by 2020 (source Helmut Kaiser Consulting 2008). Many plants are low tech and easy to reproduce and design. VoxTrac’s key competence is its reliability with dirty and corrosive gases, which existing measuring devices have difficulty with.
The global market potential for Voxstone could easily exceed $100m. An interesting feature for Voxstone as an investment case is that major meter manufacturers like ABB, Emercon and Siemens have been active in acquiring new technologies to enchance their portfolio in the high-growth process instrumentation market. Revent M&A transactions in this field include Brook’s instrument acquisition of Celebrity’s Instrumentation division in 2009 (release) and Cameron’s acquisition of Jiskoot in 2008 (release). Siemens has previously made several transactions in this area (like acquisitions of Danfoss’ flow division and Controlotron). After market validation, Voxstone will becomes an attractive acquisition target for major instrumentation suppliers.
