Laurent Melin is PI Group’s New Head of Global Sales

Laurent Melin, as of January 2024 Senior Vice President Sales at Physik Instrumente (PI)

Laurent Melin has more than twenty years of professional experience in the international sales of high-tech components and systems. He joined the PI Group in the summer of 2022 and, until now, was responsible for sales in the EMEA region. “Laurent Melin combines proven industry experience in our target markets with international management experience,” emphasizes Markus Spanner, CEO of the PI Group, and adds: “In his new function, Laurent will be a great asset to customers as well as to the PI Group with his positive attitude and customer-oriented mindset.”  

The new SVP Global Sales sees his focus on expanding OEM business with solutions from the three PI areas of expertise: nano positioning, piezo technology, and performance automation. Laurent Melin describes his sales philosophy with the help of a quotation from Antoine de Saint-Exupery: “As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it.” Laurent Melin sees the core competences of PI as inspirational drivers for supporting customers to innovate. “I see innovation as a sustainable partnership with our customers, collaborating with passion and the ability to act as quickly as possible. I see transformation as an opportunity and I thrive to involve our customers in this concept,” says Laurent Melin.

Laurent Melin succeeds Stephane Bussa, who is leaving the company at his own request. “After 16 years of commitment to PI and enormous efforts in building a sustainable Global Sales & Marketing organization, Stephane Bussa has made the decision to change professional direction. We respect Stephane’s decision. We thank him for his tireless efforts and his outstanding entrepreneurial commitment to the PI Group,” says Markus Spanner.

Successor to Laurent Melin in the role Director Sales EMEA will be Erik Reichardt, who will in parallel keep his current position as Head of Country - Netherlands.

Vita

With more than twenty-five years of professional experience, Laurent Melin has held various positions in project management as well as in direct recruitment. Over the past twenty years, however, he found his way in Sales Management: first, as Inside Sales Manager and then as Distribution Sales Manager EMEA within the Keithley/Tektronix Group from 2004 to 2011. In 2011, Laurent Melin joined the Polytec Group to take over management of the French subsidiary which he transformed into a profitable and growing entity. Mid-2022, he joined the PI Group as Director Sales EMEA, where he managed subsidiaries as well as a distribution network.

Physik Instrumente (PI Group) in Brief

The PI Group with headquarters in Karlsruhe, Germany, is the market and technology leader for high-precision positioning technology and piezo applications in the market segments Industrial Automation, Semiconductor Industry, Photonics, and Microscopy & Life Sciences. In close cooperation with international customers, PI's approximately 1,500 specialists have been continuously pushing the boundaries of what is technically possible for more than 50 years. Various drive technologies, internally developed sensor technology, electronics, and control technology provide the basis for this. PI’s portfolio ranges from components to subsystems, to tailor-made complete solutions. 508 granted and pending patents underline the company's claim to leadership in precision positioning and piezo technology. PI operates on a global scale, with nine production sites in Europe, North America, and Asia, as well as sixteen sales and service subsidiaries.