The start of the new 2011/12 fiscal year also marked the launch of Carl Zeiss Microscopy. 2,500 employees of MicroImaging und Nano Technology Systems now form the new business group in the Carl Zeiss Group. In the future the company will be the world's only supplier to offer one-stop, innovative systems and solutions for light and electron microscopy.  

Customers want integrated solutions

Customers from research and industry are increasingly using both systems and want integrated software and workflow solutions. The combination of Carl Zeiss MicroImaging and Nano Technology Systems into one business group fully reflects this trend. "By fusing the two worlds of microscopy, we are opening up totally new perspectives to our customers in science and industry," says Dr. Ulrich Simon, Head of Carl Zeiss Microscopy. "Carl Zeiss has been a pioneer in this field for more than 160 years. Carl Zeiss and Ernst Abbe together invented scientific microscopy more than 160 years ago. Since then, the company has constantly played a crucial role in shaping the progress of this technology. We are now opening an exciting new chapter in this success story."

Dr. Frank Stietz, Head of the Materials Division at Carl Zeiss Microscopy: "Today, in view of current technological developments and customer expectations, it is only logical that the two areas should merge. However, the market was totally different ten years ago. At that time the majority of electron microscopy customers came from the semiconductor industry." The Nano Technology Systems division is now being removed from the Semiconductor Manufacturing technology business group and incorporated in Carl Zeiss Microscopy. 

Correlative technology underscores just how much potential is offered by combining light and electron microscopy. One prominent example is Professor Jeff Lichtman of Harvard University, who is pioneering brain mapping with light and electron microscopy by generating three-dimensional maps of the brain. This is a groundbreaking project that is comparable to the decoding of the genome. In industry, integrated systems enable enormous advances in productivity for particle analysis, for example: instead of the 30 minutes required in the past, the automated examination now takes just a few seconds.

More clout for more growth

Since 1 October 2011, Carl Zeiss Microscopy has been operating all over the world with a uniform market identity and a shared sales organization. The company is represented with sales and service operations in 33 countries, and with production and research sites in six countries around the globe. "The integration will make us the world's leading microscope provider for the life sciences and industry," Simon explains. "In addition, we are opening up new growth potential in the life sciences and industry on the one hand, and in the rapidly developing economies on the other." Competition is increasing all over the world: microscopy is a fast-growing market because it is increasingly developing into a basic technology that is now firmly established in many different fields. It is a market that is characterized by big providers and small specialists for specific technologies. The new Carl Zeiss Microscopy business group combines two strengths: it has the right size to carry clout and offers technological expertise covering the entire microscopy process. "The bundling of R&D and investments has laid an important foundation for this. We expect a further expansion of our two-digit growth. Our long-term goal is to become the leading customer contact for everything related to microscopy," Simon adds. "The next step is the legal integration of the two companies in Germany due for finalization by the summer of 2012. In the USA, France, UK and Japan the legal integration has already been completed.

For more information visit www.zeiss.de