Camera-maker
Basler
is having a good year. With nine months gone revenue is running 17%
above the same period in 2012, at €49.1m. Much of the growth is
coming from Asia, which now accounts for over 40% of sales, although
the quarterly report also speaks of market share gains in Europe and
North America.
One
of the numbers I like to watch is R&D spend, and that grew 8% to
€6.7m. That’s a healthy number, although it represents a cut of
1% as a percentage of sales. Of course it takes time to ramp up R&D
effort, so maybe we’ll see that change in 2014.
The
problem is certainly not that management is recruitment-averse.
Headcount is up 14% to 330, so they’ve certainly been bringing in
more people. I suspect though that these are sales, production and
distribution folks rather than the harder-to-find camera development
boffins.
And
that raises my final point for today. Is the machine vision industry
going to reach a point where lack of skilled people constrains
growth? The Basler numbers suggest to me that might be on the
horizon.
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