Honeywell International (www.honeywell.com) announced on June 28 that it has completed the acquisition of Matrikon Inc. (www.matrikon.com)—a deal first announced on May 13—for approximately $139 million. Matrikon will be integrated with the Advanced Solutions business of Honeywell Process Solutions (HPS, www.honeywell.com/ps), based in Phoenix. Matrikon’s open connectivity in process control business, MatrikonOPC, will operate as a separate business entity within HPS.
{mosimage}“The Matrikon brands are outstanding additions to our technology portfolio,” said Norm Gilsdorf, president of HPS, a business within Honeywell’s Automation and Control Solutions group. “Combining our experienced teams and products will enable us to create stronger, enterprise-wide solutions that improve business performance for respective customers. In addition, the deal provides significant opportunity to grow within our existing customer bases in both mature and emerging markets around the world.”
Based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Matrikon specializes in technology to manage production, optimize operations and monitor assets at industrial plants, including oil and gas, refining, energy, power and mining companies. HPS provides automation and control systems, field instrumentation, safety systems, simulation technology, wireless technology and integrated facility and process security systems for industrial process manufacturers. Matrikon and HPS products are highly complementary, specifically in the areas of asset management, production management, operations optimization, plant cyber security and data collection and visualization. In addition, Honeywell supports MatrikonOPC’s commitment to vendor-neutral open connectivity in process control (OPC), leading new technology development and helping people adopt open standards based solutions.
New markets
In an exclusive interview with Automation World, Gilsdorf said that the acquisition both gives HPS greater penetration within its current customer base while also providing entre into potentially new businesses. “Matrikon has customers where we're either not as strong or even not in, for example, upstream, offshore or wellhead. It is also strong in mining and has quite a bit of strength in asset management of heavy equipment in mines. It further has strength working with NERC CIP (North American Electric Reliability Corp. Critical Infrastructure Protection standards) in the utility industry.”
Gilsdorf said that Matrikon attracted his attention when he was running the UOP business for Honeywell prior to coming to HPS. UOP provides process technology and services to the refining and petrochemical industries, and is a leading supplier of catalysts and molecular sieve adsorbents. “At UOP, we were interested in their remote monitoring capability,” Gilsdorf noted.
Running MatrikonOPC as a separate business unit is not unusual within Honeywell, said Gilsdorf, citing Tridium, a provider of configurable software frameworks, as an example. “We want it to be successful and grow,” he added.
Personnel movement
When asked about his UOP experience with the technology and engineering division of Honeywell Specialty Chemicals. He replied that there is a lot of personnel movement between the two companies. “Honeywell likes to do things like this,” Gilsdorf said. He then referred to the recent announcement of the agreement between Honeywell and Shah Gas Development Project of the Abu Dhabi Gas Development Co. Ltd., which reflects the One Honeywell approach of the company.
