Company profile: Brijot Imaging Systems

Security screening is big business. Let us look at some numbers:

* Baggage screening: The baggage screening industry is at the start of a growth spurt which started immediately after the 9/11 attacks. Dublin-based Research and Markets reports that the industry grew from $200-$250 million per year (sales and service) in the 1990s to $1.25 billion by 2006, and is expected to grow to $3.4 billion by 2010. “In the process, this industry will reinvent and rebuild itself almost from the ground up,” Research and Markets says. “This is not an option but a must if the industry wants to be able to accommodate forecasted growth in demand from 2 billion baggage screening transactions in 2001 to… 17.6 billion in 2010.”

* Containers screening: Until 9/11, the container/vehicle screening industry was essentially an anti-smuggling and customs enforcement tool. Now, says Research and Markets, this industry is changing its focus rapidly, a change that will see the annual outlay grow from below $60 million per annum in the 1993-2001 period (focused on drug trafficking) to an anti-terror screening market of … over $1.4 billion in 2010.”

* People screening: “Almost every threat that requires people screening is currently monitored by a different system (explosives, weapons, biological, chemical nuclear/radiological),” a Research and Markets 2003 report asserts. “To add insult to injury, it is quite clear that most of today’s people screening systems deliver unacceptable performance (high false alarm rates, slow throughput, operator dependence, high transaction costs).” The report says that over a period of ten years (2001-10) the total U.S. annual people screening outlay is expected to grow to more than fifteen times its 2001 size. Sales of $590 millions in 2001 are forecasted to grow to $ 3.5 billions in 2006 and to $ 9.9 billions in 2010. The CAGR over the 2003-10 period will be more than 50 percent. The 2003 report also says that present people screening technology does not meet the post-9/11 requirements. The technology will undergo dramatic technological changes when the multiple-threats “checkpoint of the future” will be introduced in 2006-7. The 2003 report also made these estimates:

— The accumulated U.S. investment in people screening during the 2003-2010 period will be over $50 billion

— U.S. people screening service business alone was expected to grow from $85 million in 2003 to $1.85 billion in 2010

— Extensive use of biometrics will be integrated with the “checkpoint of the future”

— During the 2006-10 period, more than 80 percent of ($) sales of people screening systems will be of technologies which were not in existence in 2003

— The cost of screening a single person will be reduced by a factor of 10 — from $4-$5 per person/per checkup to under $0.5 for the same procedure

A more recent (August 2007) report on the people screening market — by Wellingborough, U.K.-based IMS Research