Materials characterization expert Malvern Instruments opened a third centre of excellence in India, established through its joint venture company Malvern Aimil Instruments Pty. Located in Delhi, and designed to serve customers in the north and north east of India, the new centre of excellence houses laboratories that are equipped with a range of Malvern systems and staffed by a full time applications team. They will provide demonstrations and deliver training, applications and technical support as well as undertaking sample analysis.

Malvern Aimil Instruments Pty was formed in 2008, the result of a joint venture in India between Malvern Instruments and Aimil, the company's long standing distributor in the region. Headquartered in Mumbai, Malvern Aimil Instruments has eight offices around India, and centres of excellence in Bangalore and Baroda, as well as the new facility in Delhi.

Cutting the ribbon in Delhi were Paul Walker, managing director of Malvern Instruments, and Arvind Verma, managing director of Aimil. Both are delighted with the success of the joint venture and reinforced the company's commitment to providing the highest possible level of customer support to users throughout India.

"It is thanks to the success of Malvern Aimil and the growing number of Malvern customers in India, that we need to extend our training and support facilities," said Paul Walker. "The new centre of excellence in Delhi will ensure that we deliver increasingly local support for our many customers in the north and north east of India, effectively and in a timely way. We want to ensure that all users of Malvern systems enjoy the same high level experience wherever they are in the world."

He continued, "The collaboration between Malvern and Aimil has allowed us to focus on providing a high level of specialist support tailored to the needs of the Indian market. Malvern Aimil has built a strong reputation for the supply and support of systems for particle characterization, rheological measurement and chemical imaging to a wide range of sectors. Most recently we have moved to providing direct support for Viscotek GPC/SEC systems in India, following Malvern's acquisition of Viscotek."

The opening ceremony was attended by a number of customers, members of the Malvern Instruments Board, senior Malvern Aimil personnel and the teams from the Delhi Centre of Excellence.