Logica H&S was founded in 1991 by two technicians experts in electronic designs for the industry, without a specific focusing. One of the first customers of the new company was involved in assistance on kiln dryers and was in need of some spares to replace the old control systems. The company started developing one first, very basic control, then they began to sell it in quantities increasing month by month. In 1995, they developed the new generation control system that they called M800 and, in the same year, they opened their web site and this was enough to find their first customer abroad (in Singapore!). Today, Logica H&S has a team of 9 persons, with 5 engineers specialized in electronics, software or mechanical design which are in charge of the development of the new products.
Easy Engineering: What are the main areas of activity of the company?
LOGICA H&S: Nowadays Logica H&S is totally focused in Kiln Drying controls and moisture meters for wood. The main market for Logica is the industry of kiln dryers producers, in almost all around the world. Our biggest markets are Russia, Europe, Far East Countries and the Americas. We also sell our products (mainly the moisture meters) to woodworking machinery importers and retailers.
E.E: What’s the news for 2021 about new products?
LOGICA H&S: We are pushing a lot the development of new products and 2021 will see some important news in the offer of Logica H&S. Continuing the effort of expanding our presence in the moisture measurement fiel, after having renewed and increased all the range of portable meters, we are now working on a new instrument specific for in-line measurement. The prototype is almost ready and this year we’ll began the on-field testing. At the same time we are proceeding in creating the basis for the new generation of high-end control systems, which will be connected in cloud so offering all the advantages of the new trends of technology, such as remote control from the smartphones, data collection, advanced capabilities for automatic optimization of the drying cycles and integration with the other devices of the factory.
We are also developing a series of devices specifically to approach a new field of application for our products: in the past years we began using the moisture meters originally developed for the kilns also for the surveillance of wooden structures for the construction industry. Since we are getting some good results in this field, we are little by little increasing the offer, with products specifically designed for this application. After the apps for the smartphones and the gateway to connect the devices to the cloud developed last year, this year will be the turn of the hardware: It is now almost ready to be released a set of new measurement devices, which will greatly simplify the installation and maintenance work, zeroing also the aesthetic impact of the system inside the buildings.
E.E: What are the ranges of products?
LOGICA H&S: Today we can count on a wide catalogue of kiln control systems to satisfy all the demand, from the smallest kiln to the widest plant, for conventional, condensation and vacuum kilns. The range includes all the traditional sensors for kiln control, but also wireless sensors to eliminate the need of connection cables with the timber stacks, digital sensors to improve the measurement of the climate inside the kiln and also special anemometers (wired or wireless) specifically developed to be used in the middle of the wood stacks to optimize the air flow, which is often the higher cost in terms of energy in the kiln conduction.
Moreover we have recently expanded our range of moisture meters, introducing some interesting news to make it easier to get more accurate results. Our catalogue now includes 6 model of moisture meters (4 contact type and 2 pin type) in several configurations and with an increasing number of accessories, in order to cover all the woodworkers needs.
E.E: At what stage is the market where you are currently active?
LOGICA H&S: The market for the control system for kiln dryers is, of course, a niche sector, where the numbers are small. This makes of Logica one of the biggest players in the sector with nearly 2 Thousand of control systems produced per year. In some Countries the market is new: in our life we have experienced the big expansion of the market in Malaysia, then Thailand, and lately, Vietnam.. these countries was in need of drying system and they started to purchase kilns at very high rates, until their market became full. Then, they continue to purchase at slowed rate, as it happens in Europe, where the market is mature and is mostly based on replacement/refurbishment of existing kilns. Anyway, sometimes also mature markets have big pulses of demand as happened in the latest years because of the new demand of system for phytosanitary treatments.
E.E: What can you tell us about market trends?
LOGICA H&S: For the next future we expect an increase of demand from Countries where the drying kilns are not yet automatized… I mainly think to India, but also we are getting the first signals from Africa where there are already some big plants of foreign companies, but the local demand is not started yet.
E.E: What are the most innovative products marketed?
LOGICA H&S: In almost 30 years of activity, we developed several innovative solutions, from the simple spring clamp for the EMC plates (a solution to make it fast and easy the replacement of the EMC plate used as humidity sensor inside the kiln, now adopted by all the competitors) to the most complex innovation, like dTOUCH, a control system able to self-improving the drying cycles on basis of the results of the previous ones, WinDisk, an anemometer specifically designed to be positioned in the wood stacks, returning all the parameters to control the drying (Air speed, Temperature, Humidity) without the hassle of the connection cables. Last year we introduced MT20, a special portable contact type moisture meter, able to measure at the same time at two different depths, so informing the operator in real time about the distribution of the moisture and the reliability of the measure.
E.E: What estimations do you have for 2021?
LOGICA H&S: Our market is a small niche, but fortunately it is very spread around the world… this makes it generally quite stable: the decreasing of the demand in one Country is usually compensated by an higher demand in another.. only in case of worldwide crisis also our market is affected.. it happened in 2008 and, due to the Covid19, it happened again also in 2020 when, after years of continuous growth, we experienced a slow down of the demand.
We think that also 2021 will be affected by the pandemic: despite in the last months we received a lot of orders for our products, there are also a lot of difficulties in finding the components for the production. It is not easy to work in these months… it will take some time to return to the normal market situation.
