Konica Minolta Sensing Europe is a subsidiary of the Industrial business division of Konica Minolta Group, a global technology company headquartered in Japan. The subsidiary specializes in the production of advanced measuring instruments and systems for Colour, Appearance, Light, and Displays.
The headquarters in Japan conducts research and development to improve its products and stay at the forefront of the industry. And Konica Minolta Sensing Europe serves the industry in more than 30 countries with Branch offices and qualified Distributors throughout the EMEA region.
Derived from the state-of-the-art optical and image processing technologies, measuring solutions from Konica Minolta Sensing help improve quality control and support R&D in a diverse range of industries: automotive, consumer electronics, building materials, chemicals, food, medical, paint and coatings, pharmaceutical, plastics, pulp and paper, textile, and others.
The company is committed to delivering high-quality and reliable measurement solutions that help customers improve their products and processes, and achieve their business objectives.
The wide range of product portfolio is divided in 4 product categories that target specific applications:
- Colour and Appearance measurement
- Light and Display measurement
- Graphic Arts
- Hyperspectral Imaging
Some of the products they offer include colorimeters, spectrophotometers, gloss meters, illuminance / luminance meters, and display colour analysers. These instruments are designed to measure and analyse various aspects of colour, appearance, and light to ensure quality control and consistency in production processes.
What are the ranges of products?
Ewald Rath, Technology Manager Colour & Appearance EMEA: With our Colour & Appearance instruments, we provide sensing solutions to all industries where precise colour communication is critical. Whether it’s the final product or raw material, in liquid form, solid, powder or paste. Our handheld instruments such as the CM-26dG provide flexibility and ease-of-use in for example production lines. For laboratory environments, our benchtops like the CM-36dG may be better suited. These benchtops not only measure colour reflectance, but also allow for measuring colour transmission of translucent materials. Combined with our software SpectraMagic™NX, our customers can easily include colour as part of their Quality Control (QC) process, by visualizing trends and outliers in various common colour indices.
Dr Kedar Sathaye, Product Manager Light & Display EMEA: In the Light and Display product category, there is a wide variety of products which covers specific applications. Each one of the products is dedicated to meet different customer / market requirements: from handheld devices to measure illuminance to lab-based devices to measure the luminance and colour of the screen. Our devices have found usage in laboratory and production, as well as in quality control for various industries such as automotive, consumer electronics, aerospace, and medical market.
The display colour analyser CA-410 is one of the most innovative products. It is a family of products, which allows display measurements for End of Line, Lab, as well as Quality assurance purpose. It is colour analyser, which is extensively used in display industries for different types of displays from LCD, OLED to microLED displays.
There is a new exciting product range that was launched as recently as April 2023. The new CS-3000 spectroradiometer is the best in class and succession of the existing product CS-2000 with exciting new features. This is family of products meaning there will be different types of spectroradiometers with different features and each of the feature offers unique opportunity depending upon the application.
What can you tell us about market trends?
Ewald Rath: Our market penetration and presence are recognized in some industry by being the standard industry device to use.
Our instruments and software solutions can be found in both mature and (re-)developing markets. While some industries have already replaced human vision for quality inspection by machines for a long time, other industries are just starting to experience this transition. Their applications are typically more demanding (small parts, subtle variations) and traditional measurement hardware couldn’t match the performance of our highly sensitive eyes. The ongoing developments in our sensing solutions assure that more and more of such applications can now be addressed by colour measurement instruments.
The industrial market is following the current Industry 4.0 shift where controlling data and automation are key.
Solutions for determining whether a product is within tolerances used to be offline. We recognize that our customers request quality control on overall appearance; not just colour. Gloss was already part of the appearance measurement toolbox, but quantifying patterning in colour or topology -for example in natural materials- is bringing new challenges. Furthermore, there’s more and more need to have a solution integrated in production lines and in reporting systems.
In 2020, the Konica Minolta Group was extended with SPECIM. This company provides hyperspectral imaging solutions, which allows high resolution sensing beyond the visual part of the colour spectrum. It’s amazing to see what information can be obtained from such hyperspectral images. The field of applications with this technology is enormous: mineralogical composition of rocks, fat and moisture content in meat or even early detection of diseases in crops.”
Dr. Kedar Sathaye: In 2023, we think automotive will show strong growth with a lot of innovations in sunroofs, pillar to pillar displays, displays replacing the rear-view mirrors. We also believe the ARVR glasses will see significant market penetration.
We see a lot of industries levelling to the requirements of Industry 4.0, keeping in mind the importance on the quality, productivity, and cost saving.
In addition to manufacturing and selling measuring instruments, we also provide a range of services, including technical support, training, and consultancy, to help customers optimize their measuring processes and achieve their quality goals. Our geographical proximity in EMEA answer to our customers need for a local relationship directly with the manufacturer.
