Automated DPX process - Gerstel

GSW: You have been with GERSTEL Inc. for
15 years, you are so to speak a man of the
first hour, and you have been in
charge of steering the company
for a number of years. Please
describe to us how the company
has developed?
Bob Collins: In the beginning it
was a very small operation of
just two people. The challenge
was covering the entire country
instantly. This had to be done
even though we were so small,
since U.S. companies typically
have a country-wide presence
and need to replicate their solutions
in other branches as well.
So you can’t just sell in Baltimore, you also
need to be able to support customers in Los
Angeles, which is a 6-7 hour flight away. In the
beginning, I was the sales person, the service
engineer and the technical support person all
in one. With such a small staff it was a real
challenge initially, but as sales grew, we added
people and things became easier. We have had
organic, steady growth, adding people as sales
grew while doing our best to provide worldclass
support along with the world-class products
and solutions GERSTEL offers.
What is the distinguishing feature of GERSTEL,
Inc.? What are the strengths of your company
and what is the added value you offer your
customers?
The unique feature of GERSTEL is of course
the products themselves; they do things that
no other products can. They provide unequalled
sample preparation capabilities
that are easy to use due to our advanced
software. They allow the analyst to achieve
very low detection limits in even the most
difficult sample matrices; within the field
of chemical analysis our products and so-
GERSTEL Solutions Worldwide Interview
Interview with Robert J. Collins, GERSTEL Inc., USA
Looking forward to shaping
the future of the business
GERSTEL is recognized as one of the leading providers of automated sample preparation and sample introduction
solutions for GC/MS and increasingly for LC/MS. After building a reputation as a leader in specialized
solutions for GC in Germany and Western Europe, management decided to expand GERSTEL’s presence
to the United States. In 1994, the company took the plunge and GERSTEL, Inc. was founded. Today,
almost 15 years later, GERSTEL, Inc. has moved into new larger headquarters near the Baltimore Washington
International Airport in order to provide the best possible support for its large and growing family of
customers. GERSTEL Solutions worldwide spoke with long-time GERSTEL, Inc. President Robert (Bob) Collins,
Ph.D., about how GERSTEL, Inc. developed over the past 15 years.
18
GERSTEL, Inc.
President Robert J.
Collins, Ph.D.
lutions are truly unique. Additionally, we
offer comprehensive application support,
technical training and service
support. Our customers consistently
tell us that we do this
better than anyone else, in the
US alone, we have five application
scientists. Our service engineers
are excellent, and our
sales people are very experienced
and knowledgeable. This
can be a great help to customers
when they are trying to determine
which GERSTEL product
best suits their needs. All system
purchases from GERSTEL in the
U.S. include a training course.
We have just moved to new headquarters
with a wonderful new training facility that
has greatly improved our capacity. Also, every
time you call GERSTEL, you get an actual
person on the line. You can speak directly
to an application scientist or a service engineer;
you are not just asked to leave a message
or just given a reference number with
the message that you will be called back. We
try to give personalized high-level support
in all aspects of the business.
In order to be innovative and to offer customers
added value, a company needs to invest in
research and development. What is GERSTEL
doing in that field?
We are doing a lot! GERSTEL, Inc. is a subsidiary,
product development is performed
in Germany, but we are very active in method
development and provide ideas for product
development based on input from our U.S.
customers and our sales and support staff.
This combined with input from Japan and
Germany allows GERSTEL to constantly refine
existing products and develop new ones.
If you look at GERSTEL products and solu-
tions today, you can see we’ve come a long
way from just GC inlets. We now offer a wide
range of sample preparation and analyte enrichment
capabilities that can be used in almost
all areas of GC and LC analysis.
Speaking of innovations, you are a long time
PittCon exhibitor, which products are you highlighting
this year?
The main thing we will be highlighting is the
new automated DPX technology, which we
are extremely excited about. DPX is an abbreviation
of Disposable Pipette Extraction,
it is essentially a miniaturized, fast SPE technique.
We are also showing a host of other
new solutions: Automated SPE; Automated
SPME Fiber Exchange, a multi-fiber system
that will be a useful tool especially for the
food, flavor and beverage industry. It enables
the use of different SPME phases in one automated
sequence for flexible and efficient
screening and analysis.
Will any other innovations from the past year
be shown?
A lot of automated sample preparation techniques
have been developed over the past
few years that we will present such as an
automated blood analyzer with centrifugation,
sonication, sample heating and barcode
reading. We have also integrated sample
weighing. We have a great tool kit for automated
sample preparation.
Better than the competition?
I would say yes, since it is much more modular,
easier to customize to the exact needs
of each laboratory and surprisingly inexpensive
compared with other robotic solutions.
And since everything is controlled through
our powerful, yet easy to use, MAESTRO
software, it is really amazing how quickly
we can put a solution together.
GERSTEL Solutions Worldwide – March 2009