Citect began its life in 1973 as a provider of hardware control systems and engineering services to the dairy, food and mining industries called Control Instrumentation. Two name changes later, Citect has grown into a leading provider of industrial automation solutions.
Over the years, the Australian company has expanded into the international market, with its services and solutions now available globally. Its services include providing real-time automation and control and business intelligence systems for a number of industries. These include the mining and manufacturing sectors.
Some of the better known products offered by the company include CitectSCADA, a fully integrated human machine interface and supervisory control and data acquisition solution offering control over engineering and runtime operations, and Ampla, a manufacturing execution system that delivers real-time production management information.
In 1997, Citect listed on the Australian Securities Exchange. In 2006 it became part of Schneider Electric Group when the energy giant acquired all outstanding Citect shares.
CEO Christopher Crowe, who came on board in 2007 as global vice-president of sales and services and moved up to his current position a year later, said the merging of Citect and Schneider Electric would continue to be mutually beneficial for the two companies.
“As we are no longer a publicly listed company our focus is now to deliver to our new parent/shareholder, Schneider Electric,” Crowe said.
“This means maintaining the strong brand presence of Citect in the Australian and global markets, while helping Schneider Electric emerge as a major vendor of SCADA and MES solutions in its direct presence of 100-plus countries.”
While Citect has experienced significant international growth over the past decade, Crowe has aspirations to take the company to the top. He has designs on positioning the company as a world leader in its field.
“Our ambition is to be the leading software company in the SCADA and MES domains globally,” Crowe said. “With the large R&D investment now injected by Schneider and the impressive double-digit growth the company is experiencing, we are on our way.
“Internationally our challenge is getting the Citect brand established in countries where it is not known as one of the main players. The alignment with Schneider Electric Group will certainly reduce this barrier as time progresses.”
About half of Citect’s business comes from the mining industry and Citect products and services are in use at more than 1000 minesites around the world. With this in mind, Crowe said the mining sector was an obvious growth market for the company.
“This is not a new industry for Citect, as the foundations of the original product were designed around the mining customers in Australia,” he said.
“Today our in-house domain expertise in this segment is still extremely high and is reflected with the number of mining companies currently using our solutions and consultancy.”
Crowe said while Citect had more than 20 years experience in the mining industry and had built a strong customer base, the company had benefited from the increased industry focus on productivity that was a result of the mining boom.
“We’re finding our mining customers are very focused on the issues of productivity and performance and they understand technologies such as SCADA and MES can help them get a handle on these issues and achieve a better EBIT [earnings before interest and taxation],” he said.
“For all mining companies uptime is crucial, they can’t afford to have downtime, so they’re spending a lot of time on automation and efficiency and a lot of money on giving their management team news on the business – productivity rates, tonnage per hour.
“Pit to port is the all-consuming issue for mining companies at the moment and real-time automation and control and business intelligence systems give organisations visibility into what is happening at every point of the production process.”
Over the past 35 years, Citect has built itself up on a business model of offering real-time solutions to its customers. That is bolstered with a balance of products and services, such as technical support and training, and professional services, including consultancy and engineered solutions.
Crowe said Citect was able to distinguish itself from other companies in its field by its dedication to tailoring solutions to the specific needs of its customers.
“Citect will evolve around the customer and market in the years ahead,” he said. “It will become more global as the Schneider Electric Group starts to promote Citect’s product range throughout its vast global organisation.”
