Trajan’s strengthening European and UK footprint featured at Europe’s largest investor event

UK and Europe now contribute 25% to 30% of total Trajan group revenue with company recently presenting at Invest 2025 in Germany.

Trajan’s products are used to analyse biological, food, and environmental samples globally. Pic via Getty Images.

• Trajan’s UK and European operations continue to grow, with company recently presenting at Invest 2025 in Germany

• Regional footprint has expanded significantly over the years through strategic acquisitions, including Axel Semrau business in Germany

• The UK and Europe now contribute 25-30% of total group revenue, underscoring the region’s importance to Trajan’s global growth strategy

 

Special Report: From humble beginnings around a Melbourne kitchen table, Trajan has grown into a global developer and manufacturer of analytical and life sciences products, with the UK and Europe a key growth region.

Trajan Group Holdings (ASX:TRJ) was recently featured at Invest 2025 in Stuggart, which is considered the most significant finance and retail investment event in the German-speaking regions of Europe with more than 12,000 investors attending over two days

For Trajan, the event was important as it was able to promote the business to the investment community in Germany where it already has many customers and also operations and manufacturing in the region.

The company’s shares are also tradable in Euros on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the ticker Z0M providing easy access to European investors.

Trajan’s operations in the region were notably expanded through the acquisition of SGE Analytical Science’s chromatography and liquid handling business in 2013 and German company Axel Semrau in 2021.

From kitchen table to global business

Trajan was founded in 2011 by CEO and managing director Stephen Tomisich and his wife Angela, who both have backgrounds in applied science and decided around the kitchen table to acquire their first pathology consumables business.

“When Trajan first really started, the famous line from us is that it was seven people and a credit card which got maxed out pretty quick,” Tomisich said.

With a mission to positively impact human wellbeing, Melbourne-headquartered Trajan’s analytical and life sciences products are used to analyse biological, food and environmental samples globally.

The company’s customer base includes major multinational original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), pharmaceutical companies, food and environmental labs, contract research organisations (CROs), and both global and regional scientific distributors.

The company’s dedicated precision manufacturing facilities in Europe are part of its network of seven global manufacturing sites which also span Australia, Malaysia and the US.

Tomisich said around 100 of its more than 650 global employees are based in the UK and Europe, with the region accounting for 25%  to 30% of the group’s revenue.

“One of the challenges we have in determining real geographical market share is – because we are so interlinked with global customers who have centres of excellence, we can supply into one region and they might supply into other regions,” he said.

“We have become very globalised which is a position of strength for Trajan when we consider macro-economic and geopolitical challenges.”

High standards in Europe

Tomisich said one of the strengths of the European market for Trajan was that high standards must be met to be competitive, particularly around food safety.

“The EU has quite tight criteria around the presence of toxins in food and a good example is mineral oils, which are lubricants and other types of petrochemical products which enter the food supply chain through agricultural and production machinery,” he said.

“To detect those minerals in food is quite difficult and the team we have based in Germany have developed a system that we believe is world’s best practice in being able to meet those requirements for detection.

“They classify them in two categories in terms of saturated hydrocarbon and aromatic hydrocarbon and part of those are known to be carcinogens so it’s important work done with our systems to ensure the food materials in the EU and beyond meet those standards.”

Detecting odorants added to natural gas in Europe

Trajan’s business focus in Europe is also a product range involved in detecting odorants added to the natural gas supply.

“You may not know that natural gas has no odour so there are odorants added to the supply so we as humans can detect when there is a gas leak,” Tomisich said.

“The level of those odorants is critical to ensure that they are detectable, and we are one of the leading companies in Europe which developed the systems that can measure those levels.

“There’s an ironic twist here in that my first job after graduating as an analytical chemist was as the Victorian gas testing officer doing these very tests.”

Tomisich said natural gas was used extensively as an energy resource in Europe and there have been several challenges Trajan has been critical in assisting with, particularly given the Ukraine-Russian conflict.

“Due to the situation in Ukraine there has been a shut off from some of the supplies from Russia and so parts of Europe have needed to access products from other countries,” he said.

“That creates complications in terms of understanding the level of odorants in these supplies and there’s been the introduction of biogas as well, which creates other analytical problems, so one thing is for sure – analytical chemistry is everywhere.

“I remember when I first decided to study chemistry one of the things I liked was, no matter which industry I thought about there was a role for analytical chemistry and it proves to be true.”

Trajan triples down in Sprockhövel

Trajan has a manufacturing facility in Sprockhövel in Germany, which followed the purchase of the Axel Semrau business.

“We purchased more real estate in Sprockhövel to increase the physical size of the site, so we have three main buildings in that part of Germany,” Tomisich said.

“The gas detection business is based there and the other part of the business there is building robotic or automated systems for laboratory processes.

“Something we do extraordinarily well is the combination of science to solve the analytical problem with software capabilities.”

It was at the Axel Semrau Sprockhövel site where the Chronos intelligent sequencing software platform was developed, which Trajan now owns and upon which its automated workflows are built.

Tomisich said Chronos enables scientists to define the key steps of an analytical method, identify the tools available on the robotic platform, and then task the platform with optimising the most effective and efficient workflow to process and measure the samples.

“That is quite a unique differentiator in Trajan’s work and that technology we invested in Germany, we’ve now globalised and have a global team that bases laboratory robotics on that platform.,” he said.

“That part is now a third of the business and is a good example where Trajan’s growth is strong and organic growth, more so than acquisitive growth.

“Our M&A program has been targeted around what tools we need, what capabilities we need, and how we combine them to create new capabilities that drive organic growth – and that part of the business is a great example of the strategy.”

This article was developed in collaboration with Trajan Group Holdings, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.

Originally published as Trajan’s strengthening European and UK footprint featured at Europe’s largest investor event