Technical Director Glenn Tyrrell, and sales and marketing director Stuart Quinn, have purchased majority share capital of the company from the Levy Hill Group through a new enterprise, TQ Scientific
Tyrrell has become CEO of AST while Quinn will continue as sales and marketing director.
"This is a very exciting time for the company", explained Quinn.
"Sales have grown dramatically over the last couple of years and we have invested heavily in our production methods to give us increased capacity to meet continued growth.
"At this point in our development, we need to be able to respond quickly to opportunities and we wanted to streamline the decision-making process and bring more responsibility to the local management team to give greater efficiency.
"AST already has a healthy international customer base.
"Our philosophy is to become a world-class operation in the broadest sense", he continued.
"We have just made a significant investment in our caesium iodide coating capabilities at our Harlow UK manufacturing plant.
"This means that there will be double the capacity for coating detectors with the active scintillator layer used for producing digital X-ray images in the dental and medical industries, two of our major markets".
Ray Hawkins will continue as operations director and Maurice Blanchard will take responsibility for special projects.
Financial director, Iain Reid, has retired and Heather Ball has joined as financial controller.
"There will be plenty of continuity in the new structure", concluded Stuart Quinn.
"I have been with the company for 19 years and Glenn has been here ten years.
"In addition, Michael Morrow and Christopher Saunders from the Levy Hill Group join the board of TQ Scientific as non-executive directors to augment the breadth of skills on the management team".
Baker Watkin, Stevenage and PricewaterhouseCoopers, Cambridge, acted as financial advisors to TQ Scientific and the Levy Hill Group respectively.
