ALTER TECHNOLOGY has acquired a minority stake in the Edinburgh-based high-tech company Global Surface Intelligence Ltd. (GSI), which has developed a leading remote sensing platform that is able to provide forest owners real-time asset information in a regular, repeatable and automated fashion. ALTER TECHNOLOGY is part of TÜV NORD GROUP with offices in Spain, UK and France. ALTER TECHNOLOGY is a supplier in the field of parts engineering and testing of high reliability electronic components for space and other technology markets.
GSI is using Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to transform raw satellite data into commercially valuable information for certain market verticals such as forestry. The investment will be used to accelerate GSI’s sales and marketing activities in North America, support their development of the growing European Forest Carbon Market and to develop new market verticals that fit closely with areas of strategic interest for TÜV NORD GROUP.
Dirk Stenkamp, Chairman of the Board of Management of TÜV NORD AG, has highlighted the perspectives of the minority investment towards TÜV NORD GROUP: "With this strategic investment, we're creating strong synergies between our testing, inspection and certification services and GSI's new, AI-based image analysis technologies. This opens up the prospect that we'll be able to make further significant contributions to protecting the planet."
ALTER TECHNOLOGY is one of the world's leading providers of procurement, assembly, testing and qualification services for highly integrated semiconductor chips for the aerospace and other industrial markets. To date, ALTER TECHNOLOGY has been the dominant player in semiconductors and microelectronics for the "upstream" market, in other words, before a satellite is launched and will continue to focus on this core market. However, as Luis Gómez, Member of the Group Executive Committee and Head of the Aerospace business unit, explains, this investment in GSI will allow the company to diversify its business activities: "This strategic investment in GSI will allow us to make use of Earth observation data and thereby to gain a foothold in the 'downstream' market by matching ALTER TECHNOLOGY’s knowledge of the space market and TUV NORD GROUP’s strong end-use application knowledge.” The investment in GSI is taking place under the umbrella of ALTER TECHNOLOGY TUV NORD UK Ltd, based in Livingston, Scotland. “Scotland and the UK has a growing and vibrant downstream space market and the investment in GSI adds to our previous acquisitions and investments in Scotland in area of Semiconductor and Photonics for upstream space markets”, he adds.
About TÜV NORD GROUP
Since our foundation more than 150 years ago, we have been the global byword for security and trust. As a knowledge-based company, we have the digital future firmly in mind. With specialists ranging from engineers and IT security professionals to professionals for the mobility of tomorrow, we use our expertise in over 100 countries to ensure that our customers will be even more successful in the networked world.