Sky’s the limit for e2v

Technology group e2v, the developer and manufacturer of advanced electronic components and sub-systems, will enter 2006 on an upbeat note after unveiling a £2m half-year profit and a trio of new contracts. The interim surplus contrasted with a £1.1m loss for the Chelmsford company at the same stage last year.

The group was further boosted by three significant business deals, worth between them almost £17m, and spanning both its major divisions of sensors and electronic tubes.

The biggest of the new contracts, at £9.6m, came from ESA, which will use e2v’s sensors on the GAIA project. The company also won a £4.3m order to supply travelling wave electronic tubes for the Eurofighter Typhoon’s defensive aids sub-system (DASS) and a £3m contract from a US-based dental technology group to provide X-ray sensors.

Another major initiative in the half-year was the acquisition of Gresham Scientific Instruments, a leading manufacturer of systems for energy dispersive X-ray and X-ray fluorescence spectrometry. These products are used within scanning and transmission electron microscopes, in a wide range of applications in the scientific arena and in wider industrial contexts, such as mining and detection of heavy metals in food.