Hi, my name is Alan, I’m the CEO of AMPS Ltd and I want to share some knowledge I’ve accumulated over the years working in this great industry of ours.

Since I started in magnetics back at the beginning of 1999, I and most of the customers we still have, have witnessed colossal changes to the industry. All the manufacturers of magnetic pigment that we knew back then have gone. There are a couple of new companies producing, but the volume has gone from the market. Back in 1999, the magnetic pigment volume in Europe was around a thousand tonnes per year, today, that volume has gone down to around 150 tonnes for Low coercivity product and around 100 tonnes for high coercivity. I’m talking only about recordable magnetic pigments so the products used in producing magnetic stripes for cards, and mass transit/mass movement tickets. Couple of reasons why I believe the volumes have reduced,

• Audio & Video tape in volume has disappeared from the market place
• RFID and NFC has taken some of the remaining magnetic market.

Interestingly, where there is a chip card, there is also a magnetic stripe, so chip and pin has not had the detrimental effect that was forecast when it was introduced. However, it becomes increasingly difficult to justify production of magnetic pigment where there is more than one manufacturer competing for a diminishing market.

As a manufacturer and distributor of magnetic pigment, the years since 2007 have been lean with regard to volume. However with some clever working and a little forward thinking we’ve been quite successful in creating small niche markets where there is little competition. Sometimes a magnetic pigment is used in small volume but has a regular requirement, we’ve got a couple of those customers. Sometimes a customer wants to know how to coat magnetics because they haven’t done it before, we are always ready to share our technical knowledge.

However, in 2019, we’ve finally taken the plunge and will start producing magnetic tape. We’re starting with audio tape and we’ll see where it goes. At the moment, we’re only producing type 2 but if we decide to go further, we’ll also make type 1.

That brings me nicely to the real topic of this post! We have a trial batch of 5000kg of 650 Oe magnetic pigment. If you have a look at our magnetic pigments page you will see AMPS-650. If there is sufficient interest, we will make more, if not, well maybe we could make video tape!!

I’ll keep posting as long as my viewers keep reading so please subscribe to our website. From small acorns huge trees grow, lets see if we can make it to 30 years!