Dr Josep Montanyà I Silvestre, CEO, Nanusens

The tariff dispute has caused a direct disruption as we've seen prices rise for materials because many suppliers use aluminum and steel which have been impacted. We import some but not all materials from China so the direct impact is not large. Exports to China have been impacted, but we've been using our Singapore-built products more so we’ve been able to maneuver there.

The impact we're definitely feeling is the slowdown of world-wide economies, which some experts would argue, has been accelerated by the impact of the tariffs. We haven't seen a direct impact, but when you're in the global capital equipment business once growth slows, sales are impacted except for new technologies and replacement of legacy equipment.

We've recently launched two new innovative products that were highlighted during the interviews we conducted at Productronica. Our automatic solder nozzle cleaning system uses a flux gel instead of adipic acid and has a vacuum system to extract the vapors before they contaminate the machine or workpieces.

Our two-segment board handling system allows processing of two PCAs at the same time without using pallets and has been now been copied by other selective soldering manufacturers. We will also be introducing other new innovative products throughout 2020.