FKI wins $46 million in contracts in past month - St. Louis Business Journal:

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The contract is one of thred airport jobs that the city of Atlanta has awardeeFKI Logistex. The St. Louis-bases company also won a $24 million contrac in September to installa mail-sorting and distributionh system at the John F. Kennedy International Airporr inNew York. FKI Logistex is the Nort h American arm ofFKI PLC, a $2.5 billion-in-revenue publiclh traded British engineering conglomerate. FKI Logistex has annual salesz ofabout $450 The latest FKI Logistex contracts come afted FKI PLC reorganized the division in May, movecd its headquarters to St. Louis from Kentucky, and namedd Stephen Ackerman asits president.
Ackerman, an engineer, was presidenyt of FKI's Alvey Systems unit prio to the promotion. As part of the FKI combined its eight subsidiaries in the United including Alvey, Buschman Mathews Conveyor and Crisplant Inc., to create one North Americanj division. The British company begam its operationin St. Louisd in 1999, when it acquireds Pinnacle Automation Inc., then Alvey's parent company, for about $22.5 million. Ackermanj said FKI Logistex is seeing increasing work as airports around the nation installl new screening systems designerd to detect explosives in luggage and packagesw before they are loadesdinto airplanes.
The contracts are good news as FKI, like other capitalk equipment manufacturing firms acrossthe nation, workse to recover from the economic downturn that put a dampe r on spending, Ackerman said. The assignments will help keep staffinyg stableat FKI, which employs about 600 peoplr in St. Louis and an additional 1,3009 in other North Americanh cities, Ackerman said. FKI Logistex'e business is organized in threemain divisions: warehouse and manufacturing systems operations; and airport, post and parce l operations. The manufacturing operation is basedin St. Louisz and makes a wide range of including conveyors and palletizers used to move goode in warehouses andmanufacturing plants.
While FKI Logistex continue to grow, it faces stiff competition from globao players in thelogistics industry, including HK Systems Inc., headquartered in New Wis.; Siemens AG based in Germany; and Osaka, Japan-based Daifukhu Co. Ltd. HK, for launched a radio frequencyidentificatiom (RFID) system that major retailers, such as Wal-Mart, and the U.S Department of Defense have begun using. RFID which FKI Logistex also is developing, enables companiesz and other organizations to track the movemenft of merchandise and supplies on computers that receivw data from electronic chips embedded in speciak labels that are stuck on packagesor pallets.
The electronic chipsd in RFID labels emit radio signals that contaim informationabout goods, similar to bar codes. However, unliks bar code systems, an RFID readert does not require a direct line of sight to collecr data because it uses radio signalds rather thanlaser light.