Hitachi servos head for the UK

Silverteam, the company set up to act as UK agent for Hitachi automation products following last year`s collapse of HID, is planning to expand into new markets and technologies. It will soon start to sell Hitachi servo drives in the UK for the first time and is targeting the HVAC sector with a dedicated IP54 drive. Managing director Stuart Harvey believes that the company could be the number three supplier to the UK`s £15m HVAC drives market "within the foreseeable future".

Silverteam will soon be launching two new microdrive products, as well as an "intelligent inverter block". It has just started to sell a low-cost Web-based controller and has developed a PLC-based building management system.

Harvey reckons that Silverteam has kept "about 95%" of HID`s former customers and has achieved a "significant" increase in its market share. Under the new arrangement, where Silverteam acts as Hitachi`s UK agent rather than as a distributor, its eight distributors can sell the company`s products at lower prices than was possible under HID. "They now have the pricing support to compete with everyone else in the market," Harvey says.

The plan is that Silverteam will, in time, become Hitachi Industrial Drives and Automation - but approval is needed from Japan before this can happen.