SKF acquires Baker Instrument Ft Collins, Colorado in USA, a leading manufacturer of test and diagnostic instruments for electric motor assessment.

Baker has yearly sales of some USD 11 million and 62 employees.

The condition monitoring technologies used by SKF to date are based on measurement of mechanical properties, principally via vibration and lubrication analysis.

“This move into electric motor diagnostics is important to our new Energy Efficiency solutions business, and is in line with the SKF Group’s move towards supporting our customers in their Sustainability efforts” says Phil Knights, President SKF Service Division.

Baker’s sales are mainly focused on the industrial motor users and geographically mainly on the American market.

SKF pays USD 14 million for the company, on a cash and debt-free basis.
Baker will be part of SKF Reliability Systems within the Service Division.

Interesting that this the statement talks about placing Baker in the new Energy Efficiency solutions.

Like the Enterprise Asset Management market - I suspect that this is just the first of the next round of PdM instrument manufacturers consolidation.

Terry O

Who is next?

Terry O

The original purpose of the Baker Explorer, when it was developed at Oregon State University, was to be a portable field efficiency tester. The additional capabilities were added after it was aquired, along with one of the research engineers, by Baker Instruments.

Did they purchase just the field instrument division or the fixed instruments?

Howard

The entire company

Seems cheap for $14M with $11M in annual sales...

What's left for other mergers?

PdMA???
Ultrasonics manufacturers???
???