With the myriad new technologies unveiled at PITTCON 2008, being held this week in New Orleans, one question is being asked over and over: what about the recession that the rest of the U.S. economy is seeing? How is that affecting the analytical instrumentation market? The answer has been the same, and it’s been encouraging: the recession isn’t affecting the analytical instruments industry at all. Top executives from companies such as Waters Corp., Thermo Fisher Scientific, and Agilent Technologies agree on the point that their businesses haven’t seen any downturn in sales despite the recession in the U.S.

This could be due to many factors. Although spending in R&D is trending down, pharmaceutical companies still need the basic equipment for drug discovery. In addition, analytical instrumentation is a worldwide business, so the downturn in the U.S. economy hasn’t had as big an effect on these global companies as it would on one which was solely U.S.-based. Whatever the reason, it is good to see here in New Orleans that the business of R&D is still going strong.

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