Smiths Detection Brand Guidelines: Graseby, Heimann & a 2026 Move to CVC

A division assembled from four businesses.

Smiths Detection was assembled rather than founded. Its parent, the British engineering group Smiths, entered the detection business in 1997 when it bought Graseby plc, whose Watford site had developed ion mobility spectrometry for detecting chemical warfare agents, according to a Smiths stock-exchange announcement of 1 October 2002. Smiths added Environmental Technologies Group of Baltimore, Maryland, in 1999, a maker of hand-held detectors for military forces and emergency services, the same announcement says.

The third piece was Barringer Technologies. In an announcement dated 9 March 2001, Smiths said it had agreed an offer for the NASDAQ-listed company, then based in Warren, New Jersey, with its main manufacturing near Toronto. Barringer made portable devices for detecting traces of explosives and narcotics, used at airports and by law-enforcement agencies, and had recently launched a walk-through trace detector. Smiths said at the time that Barringer’s core technology was the same as that of its existing businesses, Graseby Dynamics in the UK and ETG in the US.

The three were combined in 2002 under the name Smiths Detection, Smiths said that October; English Wikipedia dates the new division to July 2002. On 1 October 2002 Smiths announced an agreement with Germany’s Rheinmetall group to buy Heimann Systems of Wiesbaden, a maker of X-ray systems for inspecting luggage, freight and mail, subject to European regulatory approval. Heimann also brought a biometric business that recorded fingerprints and palmprints for police and civilian use.

Heimann’s own history begins after the war. The City of Wiesbaden’s online encyclopedia says the physicist Walter Heimann founded HEIMANN GmbH there on 1 April 1946, under the name “Physikalisch-Technische Werkstätten.” Its first successes were electronic flash units for photography and exposure meters; television camera tubes and other optoelectronic parts followed. The firm had been based in Wiesbaden’s Kohlheck district since 1949 and had grown to about 500 employees by 1970. In 1993 Rheinmetall took over the security-technology division of Heimann Systems, which passed to Smiths in 2002, the same entry says.

X-ray, CT and trace detection.

The company’s range follows those origins: X-ray and computed-tomography scanners for cabin and hold baggage, air cargo and vehicles; trace detectors for explosives and narcotics; and equipment for mailrooms and people screening. Its website groups them by sector — aviation, ports and borders, urban security and defence — and adds tray-handling systems, remote screening and its iCMORE detection software.

The HI-SCAN 6040 CTiX is a 3D X-ray scanner for cabin bags; the company says it has sold 2,000 of them and that they are in use at more than 100 airports in Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and the Americas, and that it would show the machine at Passenger Terminal Expo. In a press release, Smiths Detection says London Heathrow has rolled the scanner out across all its passenger terminals, having first selected it in March 2021, so that passengers can leave liquids and laptops in their bags. Larger machines include the SDX 10080 SCT for hold baggage and air cargo and the HI-SCAN 10080 XCT; the company lists approvals for them from the UK Department for Transport, the European Civil Aviation Conference and the US Transportation Security Administration.

The division grew again in the 2010s. On 21 April 2016 Smiths announced that it was buying Morpho Detection, the US detection business of France’s Safran, and it was folded into Smiths Detection, English Wikipedia says, citing The Wall Street Journal of that day.

Smiths Detection says it has manufacturing sites in France, Germany, Malaysia, the UK and the USA, some of which also serve as research centres, with sales and service centres in 17 countries and more than 3,000 employees. The global head office it lists is in London; Wiesbaden remains one of its German offices. It says it has worked with defence forces for more than 50 years.

Screening and identity hardware.

Security screening and identity hardware is mostly seen in passing: the X-ray tunnel at an airport checkpoint, the arch a traveller walks through, the grey trays that slide back along a roller track. The companies that make this equipment sell to airports, customs services, border agencies, banks and governments rather than to the public, and their brands are built for procurement teams, regulators and trade-fair visitors.

Their imagery follows the equipment. Websites and brochures show security lanes with scanner tunnels and conveyor belts, walk-through metal detectors, cargo portals and gantries that a lorry drives through, and the operator screens on which bags appear as layered X-ray images. Identity makers work at a different scale: card printers small enough for an office desk, and the production lines on which passports, bank cards and ID cards are made and personalised.

Much of the business is about approvals and contracts. Makers name the regulators whose lists or standards their machines appear on, such as the US Transportation Security Administration or the European Civil Aviation Conference, and announce orders airport by airport and agency by agency. New products are shown at trade fairs such as Passenger Terminal Expo for airport equipment and Security Essen in Germany, where screening, access-control and identity companies exhibit side by side.

Ownership in this field changes often. Some of the makers in this guide were built from acquisitions or sit inside larger listed groups, and some have changed hands recently: Smiths Detection passed from Smiths Group to CVC Capital Partners in June 2026. This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it and where it says its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From Smiths Group to CVC.

For more than two decades Smiths Detection was one division of a diversified British group whose roots lie in clocks, watches and vehicle instruments, English Wikipedia says. Smiths Group then sold two of its divisions. Smiths Interconnect went to Molex, in a deal completed in April 2026, and in December 2025 Smiths announced the sale of Smiths Detection to the private-equity firm CVC Capital Partners, the encyclopedia says. Smiths Group keeps John Crane and Flex-Tek.

The sale of Smiths Detection completed on 30 June 2026, Alliance News reported that day. Smiths Detection now describes itself as an independent company owned by CVC. Its chairman is Henrik Ehrnrooth, a senior industrial partner at CVC, and its chief executive is Jerome de Chassey, who joined Smiths in 2016 to run the business in India and became president of Smiths Detection in March 2024, the company says.

For a design guide, Smiths Detection shows how one name can hold together businesses from Watford, Baltimore, New Jersey and Wiesbaden, and survive a change of owner. Compare Rapiscan Systems, another airport-screening maker built through acquisitions, and Analogic. For this guide we use navy, slate and an amber with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Smiths Detection’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.