AS someone who is a keen pilot in his spare time, it might be imagined that Andrew Wallace relishes a degree of excitement in his working life. If that is the case, he certainly won’t have to look too far for an adrenaline rush these days at Edinburgh-based Pyreos, the rapidly-growing manufacturer of ultra-thin infrared sensors.

The company is poised to break even this year for the first time since it spun out of Siemens, the German manufacturing giant, in 2007. Its progress has come as Pyreos, which Cambridge graduate Mr Wallace has led since 2015, reports growing demand for its technology around with the world. Pyreos has its biggest markets in the US and Asia, with clients including Siemens, Bosch, and Parker, the US maker of instrumentation for engines.

It is all quite a turnaround from the position Pyreos found itself in when Mr Wallace arrived at the company, when upfront investment in developing its technology meant it was losing around £4 million a year. Asked how the company had turned its financial performance around, he said: “It’s really simple. You just focus on what customers want. You focus and try not to do too many things. Those are probably the most important things.

“And I think I was lucky – there’s no point in being too early with the technology, and I think the time has come for this technology. We’ve worked very hard over the last few years, but I think we are starting to see a return now.”

The tiny sensors made by Pyreos – 40 can be squeezed into a space of one millimetre wide – have a multitude of applications. They are used by manufacturing plants in the Far East for flame detection. They can measure carbon dioxide levels in cars and homes, gauge roadside pollution, and to test for bacteria in the food-manufacturing industry. In fact, the breadth of its applications is one the reasons why Siemens decided to spin Pyreos out, reasoning that its uses extended way beyond what it could deploy within its own organisation.

“The business is actually 10 years old, and because you can use this technology for so many different things, it’s actually quite difficult to find your niche,” Mr Wallace said. “We’ve been a bit more lucky in the last few years.”

That Pyreos has established its home in Edinburgh reflects the electronics skills base which has built up in Scotland since the days of Silicon Glen, as well as the support it received from Scottish Enterprise.

Mr Wallace, who has spent the bulk of his career in telecoms and electronics, admits he was more intrigued than convinced when he was first approached by Pyreos. But all that quickly changed when he began to realise the full scope of its technology’s uses.

“I wasn’t looking for this,” Mr Wallace admitted as he reflected on how he came to be involved at Pyreos. “I came along and said: I’ll have a look, and I got rather keen. I then invested and hired a new team, and all of them have invested as well, which I take as a very exciting sign. It is a very personal thing for them – you don’t sell that to your staff, that’s up to them.”

It is not just Mr Wallace and his staff who are excited about Pyreos’ potential – the same can be said for its loyal investor base too. Mr Wallace said the company, which turns over around £1 million, has attracted around £27m of investment since its formation. John Moulton, the veteran venture capitalist, led the most recent round in January, which raised £1.7m to help speed up its development. As well as Mr Moulton’s family office, Perscitus, long-standing investors such Seraphim Capital, London Business Angels, Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmBH, Scottish Investment Bank, and Siemens Technology Accelerator took part in the round.

“The original backers were companies like Siemens and Bosch, and we still have technical and trading relationships with them,” Mr Wallace explained. “What they asked me to do was broaden the investor portfolio. Two and half years later, this round does exactly that – it brings in high profile investors with a real will to invest more money so that we can accelerate more next year.”

As well as driving sales for the current crop of sensors, work is under way on developing the next generation of the Pyreos technology. Mr Wallace said the company has received a crucial £1 million grant from Innovate UK to help fund that process.

The research is being carried out in partnership with Imperial College London, but it will involve adding to its headcount of skilled staff in Edinburgh where it currently has 30 on the roster.

“It’s about productising; it’s about the next step in making the technology lower cost, more widely able to be built and higher performance,” Mr Wallace said of the research project.

“It’s [about] cost and performance but the thing is we already have a technology; we’re already got a £1m business which focuses on selling these sensors.

“But this is to take it to the next level. In our world, if you don’t innovate, you fall behind. To innovate at the core technology level is great for the company, but also it’s really valuable in terms of building skills.”

Mr Wallace added: “It’s an 18-month project and we believe that after about two years we’ll start to see a higher performance kick on our sensors because of that. But we are already more than doubling our sales. It’s not that we need that in the short term, but everything helps.”

Moreover, Brexit is unlikely to take the wind out of its sails, though Mr Wallace does have concerns over its continuing access to skilled staff. “Most of our trading is outside Europe,” he explained. “Germany in particular is a key market, but other than that the key markets are Asia and the United States.

“If trade gains more friction then that’s an issue for us. The other thing is we’re a very specialised business, and we have plenty of people working with us who weren’t necessarily born in this country. For us it is very important to be open for skills. But in terms of Brexit itself [I don’t see there being] immediate difficulties.”