Automatic Systems Brand Guidelines: Wavre’s Barrier and Metro-Gate Maker Since 1969

Michel Coenraets, 1969.

Automatic Systems is a Belgian company. Its own history says it was created on 17 June 1969 by Michel Coenraets, an industrial engineer and businessman from Walloon Brabant, and that its first rising car-park barriers went into the car park of the Innovation department store and the Parking 44 car park in Brussels. English Wikipedia adds that he started in a small garage in the suburbs of the city, and that in the same year the company supplied a prototype pedestrian turnstile for the Brussels metro.

It soon moved and went abroad. In 1971, the company says, it exported about a hundred barriers to Frankfurt airport in Germany; in 1974 it opened a sales and technical subsidiary in Paris, and English Wikipedia says production and offices moved that year to Wavre, in Walloon Brabant, which is still its base. A subsidiary in Barcelona followed in 1986, one in Canada — in 1991 by the company’s timeline, in 1986 according to English Wikipedia — and one in the United Kingdom in 1994. In 1998 it bought the barrier division of ASEA-ABB, known as BCA, which in 2013 became its centre of expertise for barriers, when all its products were brought under the Automatic Systems name. In 1990, the company says, it supplied equipment for Disneyland Paris and for the Eurostar stations; in 1999, for the metros of Singapore and Buenos Aires; and in 2010 it installed gates for automated border crossing at London’s Heathrow and Stansted airports.

In 2002 the company was acquired by the French Bolloré group and joined its IER subsidiary, which the company describes as a maker of terminals, self-service terminals and boarding gates. French Wikipedia places it inside Bolloré through Blue Systems and IER. The company marked its fiftieth anniversary in 2019, and its corporate profile still presents it as part of the Bolloré group.

Pedestrian, vehicle and passenger.

The company sorts its range into three markets: pedestrian, vehicle and passenger. The vehicle side began with the barrier. English Wikipedia says the company built its barriers from the start around a crankshaft-and-rod drive, which it calls a reference in the barrier and gate sector ever since. Later vehicle products include the BL229 barrier, launched in 2006, and the ParkPlus barriers for car parks, sold from 2012.

Its pedestrian products are named lanes and doors. The company dates its SmartLane security lanes to 2006, its TRS full-height turnstiles to 2007, its SlimLane optical turnstiles for building entrances to 2011 — the year it also began selling the ClearLock, RevLock and InterLock security doors — and FirstLane to 2015. Its passenger range of gates for metro, rail, boarding and border crossing includes the PNG gates; more than 300 of them, the company says, went to the third line of the Milan metro in 1989.

Transport networks carry much of its story. By its own timeline it supplied double turnstiles for 18 stations of the Manila subway in 1983, 323 turnstiles for twelve stations of the SNCF’s Paris East line in 1984, 700 barriers for Boston in 2003, a framework contract for nearly fifty stations of the Stockholm metro in 2007 and gates for the Brussels metro operator STIB in 2009. Public records add a dated example: an EU contract award notice published in June 2023 shows that STIB concluded a framework agreement with Automatic Systems SA of Wavre in May 2023 for the upkeep, call-out and repair of the access gates in the metro and premetro stations of the Brussels-Capital Region, after a negotiated procedure in which one tender was received. Its mission statement says its public-transport speed gates are handled through an entity it calls Easier.

How entrance control presents itself.

Entrance control is a quiet corner of the building trade. Its makers sell turnstiles, speed gates, security doors and barriers to the people who plan office lobbies, stations, airports and sports grounds, and they tend to present themselves through installations rather than through logos: a row of glass gates in a tower foyer, a line of fare gates in a metro hall, a car-park barrier at a terminal.

The products fall into a few families. Glass speed gates, which open a pair of panels for each authorised person, are shown in office lobbies; full-height turnstiles, with rotors that reach above head height, are marketed for site perimeters and stadiums; mass-transit gates line metro and rail stations; and revolving security doors and portals are offered for high-risk sites. In 2026 ASSA ABLOY summed up one maker’s range as speed gates, mass transit gates and security revolving doors, which covers most of that spread.

Case studies carry much of the marketing. Gunnebo’s press releases describe speed gates fitted in Shenzhen’s Galaxy Twin Towers in 2023, and Automatic Systems’ own timeline reads as a list of metro networks, from Manila in 1983 to Stockholm in 2007. Public buyers leave a record of their own: in 2023 the Brussels transport operator STIB awarded the maintenance of the access gates in its metro and premetro stations to Automatic Systems, according to an EU contract notice.

The trade meets at security fairs. Security Essen, in Germany, held its 2026 edition and has announced the next for September 2028; Intersec, now called Intersec Global, is held in Dubai under Messe Frankfurt, with its next edition set for January 2027. Ownership is consolidating too: in August 2026 ASSA ABLOY agreed to buy Gunnebo Entrance Control, in a deal expected to close in the fourth quarter of the year.

Made in Belgium, France and Canada.

The company says it designs and builds its equipment itself. Its corporate profile lists three production sites in Belgium, one in France and one in Canada, along with three research and development sites; English Wikipedia names the production sites as Wavre and Gembloux in Belgium, Persan in France and Brossard, near Montreal. In 2001, the company says, its PNG 38X gate gained UL approval and was manufactured in Montreal, and in 2013 it opened a subsidiary at Taicang, near Suzhou in China, to make and supply equipment for Asian and Indian markets. It lists offices or subsidiaries in Belgium, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, Canada and the United States, and it opened a distribution centre near Chicago in 2014. It also points to buildings: in 2016, it says, its gates were chosen for the Pátio da Marítima, a building in Rio de Janeiro that it credits to the architect Norman Foster.

Its name is a plain description of what it makes, written as two words, and its website sends North American visitors to a separate regional site. The company says more than 90 million people use its equipment every day and that its public-transport products are in use in more than 25 countries. The palette here is our own.

For a design guide, Automatic Systems shows how an engineering firm can define itself through the stations, airports and car parks it equips. Compare Gunnebo, whose entrance-control business makes similar gates, and dormakaba, another European access group. For this guide we use a slate and an amber with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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