besides their motion control/optical business, which is near and dear to my heart, this aspect of HATH's business should be appealing to investors now that they have got the division restructured...taking into account the new 'national energy strategy':
Power and Process Business
Hathaway's power instrumentation products help ensure that electric utilities provide high quality service to consumers of electricity. With manufacturing facilities in Seattle and Belfast, Northern Ireland, and sales and engineering functions in Seattle, Belfast and Denver, the power products group produces a comprehensive and cost-effective range of products designed exclusively for the power industry worldwide. Hathaway's equipment assists the electric power system operators in operating and maintaining proper system performance. The products, which are used to monitor and control the power generation, transmission and distribution processes, include fault recording products, fault location products, condition monitoring (circuit breaker) products and remote terminal units for Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems.
The Company also has three joint venture investments in China, Hathaway Si Fang Protection and Control Company (Si Fang), Zibo Kehui Electric Company Ltd. (Kehui) and Hathaway Power Monitoring Systems Company, Ltd. (HPMS). The Company holds a 20% interest in Si Fang, a 25% interest in Kehui and a 40% interest in HPMS. Si Fang designs, manufactures and sells a new generation of digital protective relays, control equipment and instrumentation products for substations in power transmission and distribution systems in China. The Company may sell these products outside of China. Kehui designs, manufactures and sells cable and overhead fault location products, SCADA systems and other test instruments within the China market, and the Company may sell these products outside of China. HPMS manufactures and sells, under a license from the Company, instrumentation products designed by the Company to electric power companies in China.
The process instrumentation products group manufactures and markets products for the process and power industries, including monitoring systems, calibration equipment and process measurement instrumentation. The monitoring systems, called visual annunciators and sequential event recorders, provide both visual and audible alarms and are used to control processes in various plants, including chemical, petroleum, food and beverage, pulp and paper and textiles. Calibration equipment is used to test and adjust instrumentation for proper and accurate operation in measuring electricity, temperatures and pressure within the process industry. Process measurement instrumentation includes signal conditioning products and transducers used to measure such variables as temperature, voltage, current and power in various industrial applications.
Effective September 30, 1996, the Company acquired Tate Integrated Systems (TIS), which has since operated under the ownership of Hathaway Industrial Automation (HIA), a wholly owned subsidiary of the Company. HIA is located near Baltimore, Maryland, and is a full-service supplier of process automation systems for industrial applications. HIA has developed a state-of-the-art software system for Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) and Distributed Control Systems (DCS). The HIA system has been used to fully automate such industrial applications as water and wastewater treatment plants, glass manufacturing plants, oil and gas terminals and tank farm facilities. In addition to expanding into its traditional process markets, HIA's system is being marketed to the power utility industry that is beginning to operate in a deregulated environment. The Company has integrated the HIA system with certain other Hathaway products, and targeted the integrated product at substation automation and integration applications used in power transmission and distribution facilities. The automation system allows for the measurement, control and communication of information, including the data for the metering of electricity to ensure the reliable delivery of power, provide data privacy and to control security. |
