At the end of August 2021, the wenglor group expanded its product portfolio in the field of illumination technology. With the takeover of the Scottish-French company TPL Vision, wenglor is once again reinforcing its position in the Machine Vision sector – specifically with innovative LED illumination technologies for industrial image processing. The specialist founded in 2005 will be integrated into the wenglor group as a division, but will continue to exist as an independent business unit.
“We are very pleased to be able to significantly strengthen wenglor’s product portfolio in the Machine Vision area through the acquisition of TPL Vision,” says wenglor Managing Director Rafael Baur. “The additional know-how and almost 16 years of experience of TPL in the field of industrial illumination technologies are a real advantage. wenglor and TPL will achieve great things together!” The two central locations of TPL Vision in Perth, Scotland and La Chevrolière, France, where the company moved into a new production facility just this year, will remain in operation.
All employees will remain part of the independent wenglor business unit. This also means that existing TPL customers will continue to be supported by their usual contact persons. “wenglor and TPL share not only a young, dynamic and family-oriented corporate culture, but also the passion for innovative technologies,” confirms Daniel Huber, who will be Managing Director of TPL Vision in the future.
Innovative, International and Technologically Advanced
TPL Vision offers a comprehensive product range of different illumination technologies. Thanks to the bright LEDs, so-called power LEDs, objects and surfaces can be perfectly illuminated in any situation and complex tasks can be solved optimally with vision systems, smart cameras or vision sensors. In addition to backlights, spot, ring, bar or dome lighting are also part of the product range, which includes several thousand products. The expertise of wenglor’s new business unit also includes special illumination systems for the food industry or UV light. “The wide variety of different illuminations solutions enables us to offer our customers the right combination of camera system, lighting, analysis module and software as a complete package for all types of applications,” says Christian Vollrath, Head of the Computer Vision business unit at wenglor. “This will allow us to further expand our position as a full-service provider in the Machine Vision sector.”
Growth Through Expansion
The signs continue to point to growth within the wenglor group. The acquisition of illumination specialist TPL Vision marks the fourth successful acquisition by the family-owned company in Tettnang: Back in 2012/2013, wenglor expanded its portfolio with the acquisitions of AFM Sensorik GmbH and MEL Mikroelektronik GmbH in the fields of flow sensor technology and 2D/3D sensor technology.
The acquisition of ShapeDrive GmbH, a specialist in 3D sensors, followed in 2017. The number of employees within the wenglor group grew to almost 1,000 in total over the course of this year. In order to meet this growth, new development and production centers with a total floor space of 12,000 m² will be built both at the company headquarters in Tettnang and in Unterschleißheim, Bavaria, which will be completed over the next year.
About TPL Vision
Since its foundation in 2005, TPL Vision has been developing and manufacturing LED illumination for use in industrial automation, machine vision, robotics, and logistics applications. TPL Vision’s high power LED products and solutions are designed to provide users with the best balance between brightness and homogeneity, ensuring imaging systems can handle almost any industrial imaging processing task. Using optimized LED illumination in this way enables vision systems, smart cameras and vision sensors to perform impeccable quality checks, even over the longest working distances and largest fields of view.