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Physik Instrumente (PI) Continues to Put its Faith in Growth

Over the last four decades PI, which has its headquarters in Karlsruhe, has become the leading manufacturer of nanopositioning technology. PI is a private company with healthy growth and more than 500 employees world-wide and is thus able to fulfill almost any request in the field of innovative precision positioning technology. The company also wants to live up to the expectations placed on the technology leader in the future. In May 2010, PI bought the lot adjacent to the company site from the city of Karlsruhe in order to facilitate the expansions planned for the next few years. This increased the land available from 17,000 to more than 44,000 m².

"Although our building affords the 280 members of staff currently employed in Karlsruhe the best working conditions at the moment, we assume the current upturn will continue. PI’s average annual growth over the last ten years has been in double figures and so our plans for the future include having enough space to expand," explained Dr Karl Spanner, a partner and the president of PI. "The prospects are very good, especially since precisions far below one thousandth of a millimeter are being used more and more in industrial processes. We develop all key technologies for this in house which means we can control every phase from the design through to the shipment: The precision mechanics and the electronics as well as the position sensors, the piezo ceramics and the actuators. The latter are produced by our subsidiary PI Ceramic."

PI is definitely prepared for the future "away from home" as well. It has its own sales and service offices in all important markets and maintains testing devices for nanometrology on three continents. PI Shanghai and USA also have development and manufacturing resources which allow rapid local reaction to custom-engineered specifications.