Flowmeters and Foundations – Laying the Building Blocks of the Company

As part of our ongoing reflection on the 20 years of Katronic we continue our “on this month” feature by looking at some of the events from the history of the company

June was an important month for both Katronic and the key members of staff who have overseen its success. 

In June 1999 the company was awarded its first major project. At this time Katronic had only one full-time member of staff, Karsten Frahn, the founder of the company. He was fighting to find a foothold in the UK instrumentation sector and to get the company name known. This process was not aided by the fact that ultrasonic flowmeters were relatively unknown. The initial process of growing the business was more about education than selling. 

The project was for the supply of a package of products to a water development project in Chisinau Moldova. Although the totality of the instruments included only a few clamp-on meters, the revenue generated by the order secured the short-term future of Katronic. It also provided Karsten with the financial resources to invest in the business for the first time. The result of this was the arrival of the second full-time member of staff, a young and very fresh-faced Andrew Sutton. 

June 2008 was an equally important time for Katronic, Karsten and Andrew. It was at this point that Karsten decided that the time had come to return to his native Germany. He did this for a combination of personal reasons, and the interest in setting up a Katronic company in his homeland. 

This date therefore marked a considerable change for Andrew who took over the reigns as MD of the company. He still occupies this role to this day and has seen many developments during his tenure, as it was at the end of 2008 that we launched our own range of ultrasonic flowmeters. The company has also grown to nearly 30 people and has offices in the UK, Germany and the US.