Last week saw me visiting our partners in Japan for both Asynt and Uniqsis.
Once again I was so overjoyed by just how polite, welcoming and clean Japan’s big cities are; its such a pleasure to visit and work there.
It was a well-timed visit for me as our close partners, BioChromato, were hosting a roof-top barbeque and sushi party on the Saturday of my arrival so I was able to meet many of their business partners from both Japan and the USA and gain more insight to their ethos of business.
The evening was totally hilarious as I was invited to Karaoke and even though I had consumed very little alcohol indeed I found myself singing very badly (and loudly!) egged on by my BioChromato colleagues who were in stitches laughing at me! Before you ask, no, I will not be posting the video on YouTube!
Sunday was a day off and the BioChromato team kindly took me on a tour of some of the local temples and shrines not far from their HQ in Fujiswa. We arrived in time to take part in some Zen meditation and afterwards had a Zen lunch which of course was purely vegetables; amazingly delicious.
With the weekend over we went on tour for the next 3 days visiting key Smart Evaporator customers in and around the Tokyo area. In every case I learnt just how productive the Smart Evaporator has been, especially in small scale evaporation and for preparing synthesis samples for analysis.
As we are in partnership with BioChromato we also discussed the new Spiral Evaporator, DrySyn range of heating and cooling blocks, and the CondenSyn waterless condenser range. It seems that, just as in the UK, Europe and the USA, reducing the environmental impact of performing chemistry R&D is also critical in Japan. In the laboratories I visited all were still using oil baths so by changing to DrySyn they could see not just a significant reduction in power consumed but also a safer way of working and have no oil to purchase and dispose of. Water there too is expensive to use and in most of the laboratories I visited they were not allowed to run experiments over-night in case of flooding, even when linked to a re-circulator. They were all fascinated by the CondenSyn samples I had with me to show them and keen to try them with some synthesis.
Later in the week I sat down with the BioChromato engineers to discuss more product developments between our two companies and of course how to continue to grow our joint businesses with our close partnership ethos.
After finishing my work at BioChromato I went back into Tokyo to meet with the Uniqsis distributors, SCRUM, who are just starting to promote and offer demonstrations of our exciting NEW FlowLab flow chemistry system. SCRUM have a demo unit in Japan so are in a good position to help us with our international sales growth.
I’ll keep you informed of any future developments but I still won’t share that karaoke film!
Martyn Fordham (Managing Director)
