Automation company Omron Corp. is buying Adept Technology Inc., which is valued at about $200 million. Adept is the largest manufacturer of industrial robotics in the U.S.
Kyoto, Japan-based Omron plans to acquire 100 percent of Adept’s common stock for $13 per share, with the tender offer to begin on Sept. 23 and close on Oct. 22. Omron specializes in sensing and control technologies and is adding Adept to its manufacturing portfolio as part of its “ILO+S” (Input, Logic, Output, and Safety) strategy.
Pleasanton, Calif.-based Adept makes autonomous mobile robots, machine controllers, machine-vision systems, and other industrial automation products. It supplies robots to the automotive, electronics, food, medical, and semiconductor markets.
Benefits and distribution
Adept restructured in 2013 and recorded sales of $54.2 million last year. The company said it has “more than 25,000 non-captive robots” built for customers, with more than 30,000 Adept-controlled robots worldwide. The deal should help Adept sell its products internationally.
“As global manufacturing comes under even more pressure to cut costs, shorten supply cycles, and operate across global environments, production sites around the world strive to improve productivity,” the companies said in a statement.
Adept’s robot arms assemble medical devices.
“Increased use of labor-saving robots is one of the solutions,” Omron said. “By adding the robotics technology of Adept to its current offering, Omron will be very well positioned to provide manufacturers in the automotive, digital device, food and beverage, packaging, and other industries with solutions to these challenges, as well as engineering support.”
Omron also authorized Brussels-based Hitaltech as a distributor of its FPC/FFC electronics components, which are designed for applications connecting an LCD panel and a printed circuit board or other board-to-board connectors.
In addition, Mouser Electronics Inc., a Mansfield, Texas-based subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., will distribute Omron’s electrical components in Asia, Europe, and North America.
Omron, whose ping-ping-playing robot won awards last year, is interested in selling its switches, relays, and sensors more widely in China and worldwide.
A slowed but still-growing market
The global market for industrial robotics will grow from $26.78 billion in 2012 to $41.17 billion by 2020, according to a report by Allied Market Research. It attributed much of this growth to automation in electronics manufacturing, nanorobotics in pharmaceutical creation, and demand in the Asia-Pacific region.
The report said that automotive manufacturing will continue to be important and that articulated robots will be used increasingly in logistics and healthcare. Allied Market Research also predicted rapid growth in the metal and machinery industry, rubber and plastics, and food and beverages.
More on Adept and Omron:
Transparency Market Research (TMR) has predicted that the market will grow from$28.93 million in 2013 to $44.48 billion by 2020. It identified precision and optics, welding, and material handling applications as additional growth areas for industrial automation.
This growth could be even better, but TMR noted that “stagnating industrial manufacturing and postponement of investment owing to high costs of capital will have an adverse impact on the performance of the global industrial robotics market in the forthcoming years.”
