Bertin Environics

Bertin Environics is the Finnish CBRN detection business that most people still know as Environics Oy. It started in Mikkeli in 1987 out of a research partnership with the Finnish Defence Forces, and its first product was the M86 automatic gas detector, followed by the M90. That military pedigree still shapes the company. It builds instruments for people who have to work inside a contaminated area rather than analyse samples afterwards, and almost everything in the catalogue is designed to be carried, bolted into a vehicle or left running unattended for months.

Chemical detection is the oldest line. The ChemPro100 handheld arrived in the early 2000s and became the company's signature product, was revised as the ChemPro100i, and was replaced in 2019 by the ChemProX. All of them use aspirated ion mobility spectrometry to flag chemical warfare agents and toxic industrial chemicals, with a trend line display that shows an operator whether a reading is rising or falling. A ChemProX-DS variant is built for detector-array use. Bertin Environics puts its cumulative handheld and toxic industrial chemical detector deliveries above 18,000 units.

The biological side centres on the ENVI BioScout bioaerosol detector, which runs as a trigger inside a wider monitoring system and comes in a version hardened for armoured CBRN reconnaissance vehicles and warships. BioScoutX is the newer generation. Field identification is handled by the ENVI Assay System, a set of immunoassay tests for confirming a biological agent once an alarm has been raised. Radiological work covers the RanidPro200 backpack radionuclide identifier for search and source location, the RanidX detector, the RanidProFX, and RanidPort portal monitors for border and event screening. Products from the wider Bertin range, including the Second Sight MS standoff chemical imager, the Coriolis Compact air sampler and the SaphyRAD MS survey meter, are now sold through the same portfolio.

What pulls the instruments together is EnviScreen Operix, the company's CBRN monitoring and sensor networking software. It handles alarm correlation, operator guidance, training modes and system maintenance across fixed installations, ships, vehicles and unattended ground sensor networks. Bertin Environics counts more than 200 fixed installations, over 100 naval systems and a similar number of vehicle fits. Integration work includes turnkey CBRN reconnaissance vehicles, mobile and fixed laboratories, shelter and building monitoring, and detector packages for uncrewed ground, air and surface vehicles. Training, e-learning, maintenance and system upgrades round out the offer.

Ownership has changed twice in a decade. Verso Capital took the company over in 2015 and sold it to the French group Bertin Technologies in late 2022, after which it was rebranded Bertin Environics. In 2025 it was folded into Bertin's Defense and Security division alongside Bertin Exensor, while keeping its Mikkeli plant, its Finnish engineering base and a US sales subsidiary opened back in 2002. The workforce is around 60 people, small for the footprint, and the installed base reaches more than 80 countries including nearly every NATO member.