Bridging the quality with affordability

Q. Being the key player in the industry, please brief us company’s journey from inception & share some of the milestones achieved?

Hanna Instruments is a 40-year-old company and we are proud to say that we are among the top most players in the field of analytical instruments. In 1978, Hanna Instruments was found in Italy by Oscar and Anna Nardo. Our Head Office is located in United States of America (USA).

Now we have more than 60 offices in 44 countries. Hanna Equipments (I) Pvt. Ltd. is the face of HANNA INSTRUMENTS in India. We started our Indian operation in 2006 and within short span of time we have achieved great heights. We offer more than 3000 products and our R & D team continually strive to develop new techniques that simplify the testing procedure. We attempt to provide new innovative products
at very affordable cost to our customers.

Milestones –
1. 1986 – World’s first electronic pocket sized pH Tester.
2. 1990 – World’s first Waterproof Portable pH Meter
3. 1995 – World’s first Pocket Thermometer with CAL Check
4. 2000 – World’s first Multiparameter (pH/Conductivity/Temperature)
5. 2014 – World’s first pH electrode with Bluetooth Smart technology (HALO)

Apart from all these innovations HANNA has provided many good products like Checker colorimeter: world’s first pocket photometers, Cal check pH Meters, world’s first multi parameter pocket tester, pH controller with inbuilt dosing pump.

I believe “Perfect Solution offered with Best Quality and Service
back up” is the shortest possible description that describes ‘Hanna Instruments’.

Q. Please brief us about company’s infrastructure & what are the technology alliances that has been made in order to out-front the competition?

Our Head Office is located in Woon-socket, Rhode Island, USA. This head Office has Global Marketing department, Application department, Technical training facility, Primary research and development centers. Hanna Instruments main manufacturing unit is located at Nusflau Science Park in Romania situated.

This facility has all the latest machinery to provide support to each phase of production. Major facilities include Product research & Development, Plastic injection molding, electronic assembly and glass blowing for electrodes.

Our Indian Head Office is located at Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra. This headquarter is 13000 SQF facility which houses Sales, Administration, big ware house, Technical department, Application laboratory, Marketing Department and Training Center. Recently we have opened our branch offices in Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai. We have well developed sales & service support network all over India. Our sales people have presence in almost all the major cities in India.

Q. What are the products manufactured by your company?

As I said our strength is lies in our product range. We offer more than 3000 products to market and our major instruments are for Laboratory, Process and field use. This product range includes pH/ORP meter, Ion selective electrodes, Conductivity meter, Dissolved oxygen meter, COD (Chemical Oxygen Demand) meter, Turbidity meter, Refractometers, Magnetic stirrers, Temperature/Humidity/ Lux meters, Process instruments, Many type of chemical test kits, Multi-parameter instruments and many type of electrodes for lab and process use.

These are just our major categories; in each category we offer many types of products. In pH meter category, we have some of the world’s best meters, useful for specific applications like wine, beer, soil, aquaculture, boilers etc.

Industries which we serve
are Agriculture, Hydroponics, Aquaculture, Food, Dairy, Wine, Beer, Agriculture, Boiler and cooling tower, Swimming pool & spas, Printing & graphics, Water treatment, Pharmaceutical and environmental.

We provide our products to almost every industry and we are continuously working to develop product for new applications and industry.

Q. What is your marketing strategy for India?

Our philosophy, “to be able to supply customers around the world with practical affordable solutions for their testing needs” has always been the reason for our existence.

Indian customers are looking for quality products. Providing quality instrument at affordable price is big-gest challenge for us in Indian market. Hanna Instruments is trying to bridge this gap by providing high quality instruments at affordable prices. I think Hanna has got great success in creating balance between good quality and affordable products, that’s why our pocket testers and pocket colorim-eters are trending in Indian market. At the same time, we want to introduce some new innovative products in Indian market.

We are successful to reach to our end users and our next target is to provide quality service to our customers. As I said we always wanted to be close to our customer and that’s why we have developed our Sales & Service Engineer’s network at Pan India level. We have made our presence in Delhi, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Kerala, West Bengal, Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Chandigarh etc. We have rapidly increased our customer base in India and we continue to explore more opportunities. Recently we have opened our branch offices in Delhi, Chennai and Bangalore and soon you will see some more branches in major cities.

Q. Product innovation through
R&D is vital to be a leader in the competition, as per your opinion, how does R&D plays the role of catalyst in the success process?

Research and Development is back-bone of every industry. Without R and D, it’s not possible to provide innovative products to market. Instruments is very well known for providing innovative products to market. Many innovations introduced by Hanna are now the norm for the instrumentation industry.

Hanna Instruments invest a lot
in Research and Development activity. We have our R & D centers in Romania and USA. Our research and development has played an integral role in the success of Hanna Instruments. We take the review from each and every customers about our product and then our R & D department works on developing new ideas, new thoughts and then we introduce new innovative products to market. Our main goal is to work on customer application and make suitable products for customer’s
use. Keeping this in mind, we have developed products for food industry like milk pH meter, cheese pH meter, Boiler and cooling tower pH meter.

Hanna Instruments is continuously working on upgrading and improving its existing products Company has recently upgraded its Titrator series and now HI931/HI932 titrators are available. In DO meter we have started supplying Optical Dissolved Oxygen meter to our customers.

Q. Quality standards are benchmarked by the product performance; please brief us how do you maintain the quality norms since from solution development to implementation?

Being a manufacturer and supplier of scientific products we very well know how important role our instruments play in different processes, hence we control the quality of our products from their inception to delivery. Han-na Instrument is a vertically integrated manufacturer; we do not subcontract any part of the manufacturing process, from plastic molding to glass blowing and chemical bottling to PCB and electronic assemblies.

All our products are designed, developed and engineered under ISO 9001 Standards and CE directives. Each and every product undergoes stringent quality control tests at different stages of manufacturing. We follow several Standards. Our buffer solutions are manufactured as per NIST Standard. Our turbidity meters are in compliance with ISO and EPA Standards. Most of our meters comply with IP 67 Standards (dust tight and protected against effect of temporary immersion in water).

We have already got success to reach to our end users and our next target is to provide quality service to our customers. Service is the back-bone of every company and we are planning

Q. What do you want to say to your customers?

Creating awareness about use of ana-lytical instrument is biggest challenge for us. In India still many people are not much aware about this kind of testing instruments. They face many problems while selecting proper in-struments for their application need.

Customer who is looking to pur-chase water testing instruments must consider below points.

1. Application: drinking water, waste water, food, dairy, soil boiler, cool-ing tower etc.
2. Kind of instrument: Portable, Lab-oratory, Bench, Online (Process) or for field use
3. Required measurement range, accuracy
4. Determine whether multipara me-ter or single parameter is needed
5. Are the results required for Audit Purpose? (applicable in case if your need data transfer facility)
6. Interferences: what other ions, organics or metals are present in your sample.

For process Instruments
1. Select proper instrument according your application and Installation. You can choose wall mount, panel mount, transmitter or combine instruments with dosing pump.
2. Output can be an important feature. Options can be Analog (mA or Volt) or Digital (RS485, RS232). It would be useful if you want transfer, re-cord your reading or control valve.
3. Set point: If you want to control parameters like pH, conductivity etc. then set point is important. For example: If anyone want to control pH between 6 to 7pH then he should buy two set point facility instrument.

These points answer the basic infor-mation about usage. There are other important questions that follows, however to ensure right purchase it is advisable to start with these points first.

Q. How do you perceive the future of the industry?

India has lots of opportunities in Research and development sectors. Government is investing lot of money in this sectors and it’s our duty to provide best products for research and development. We are already working towards this and successfully man-aged to provide our services to ISRO, ICAR, IIT etc.

In current scenario process instru-ments are also gaining lot popularity. “Testing, Monitoring and controlling the water parameters is the biggest challenge” and now a days online testing is getting more important than lab testing.

Currently our biggest problems are related with water. Water pollution has been one of the most important environmental concerns for India. Its largest source being the untreated sewage discharge, hence the govern-ment of India has set strict guidelines for all the manufacturing companies when it comes to sewage discharge. The Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act of 1974 restricts dis-charges of pollutants to water bodies and created Central and State Pollu-tion Control Boards with authority to set standards and enforce water pollution rules.

For instance, a dye manufacturing company has several restrictions for disposal in land, marine, and irriga-tion land. They have to control certain parameters like pH, COD, BOD, cop-per, chromium, and magnesium etc., before discharging. The pH limit is in between 6.0 to 8.5 for land and 5.5 to 9.0 for irrigation land. As in case of COD the limit is 250 ppm (mg/I).

Primary water quality criteria for drinking include:

• Total coliforms organism MPN/100ml: 50 or less
• pH: between 6.5 and 8.5
• Dissolved oxygen: 6mgil or more
• Biochemical oxygen demand for 5 days at 20 C: 2mg/l or less.

So in coming days’ people will need all type of testing instruments suitable for lab, field and process analysis. No one can afford to depend on any one measurement procedure. If you want to make sure that your result is correct then you need to follow all these measuring procedure.