Marc Van Beelen founded the company Automated Lab Systems in 1998, and had worked in laboratory automation since 1992. In 2019, Camiel de Clercq joined founder Marc van Beelen and the existing lab robotics business was brought under a new company name, Alsys International. The 2019 restructuring also brought a move from Van Beelen’s original workshop to a dedicated office and production facility, and a shift from maintaining and replacing earlier robots to building complete systems in-house.

Alsys International was founded by Marc van Beelen and Camiel de Clercq in 2019. Van Beelen had founded the company’s predecessor, Automated Lab Systems, in 1998, building and servicing laboratory robots single-handedly; de Clercq joined with over a decade of experience in the software industry and serves as CEO.

The combination is still visible in the company today: Van Beelen’s mechanical and chemical engineering background paired with software and systems expertise is what allows Alsys to integrate robots with LIMS, SAP and ERP environments rather than deliver standalone hardware.

Alsys International traces back to 1992, when Marc van Beelen began working for a laboratory automation company that later went bankrupt; former clients kept asking him to maintain their machines. In 1998 he built the first Pick & Place robot and founded Automated Lab Systems, working alone from a shed.

A robot for oleochemical analysis followed in 2005, and the first international deliveries went to Israel in 2010. In 2019 Camiel de Clercq joined and Alsys International was founded, with a dedicated office and production facility. Alsys Asia, a joint venture in China, followed in 2020, and business development expanded into Germany and the United Kingdom from 2023.

Marc van Beelen (1992–2023 in laboratory automation) was the founder of Alsys International and of its predecessor, Automated Lab Systems. In 1998, after a meeting with a representative of ICL who saw room to improve the existing systems, he designed the first Pick & Place robot — the basis for every Alsys design since. He passed away in 2023 after a year of illness.

For more than two decades he built, installed and serviced the systems himself, drawing on knowledge of both hardware and software, and in 2005 developed the robot for oleochemical analysis that opened the chemical industry to the company. The gantry-and-gripper architecture he established still underpins the High-Performance and Compact Robots today.

Camiel de Clercq is the CEO of Alsys International. He joined founder Marc van Beelen in 2019, bringing over a decade of experience from the software industry, and their partnership led to the founding of Alsys International as a new company.

Under his leadership the company moved from maintaining and replacing earlier robots to designing and manufacturing complete systems, and expanded into Asia and wider Europe. He remains closely involved in company strategy and in the culture of the business.

Alsys International is headquartered at Tieleman en Drosweg 19, 2314 XW Leiden, in the Netherlands, where its offices, engineering, chemistry, software and production facilities are located. Sales offices operate in Germany, the United Kingdom, alongside a sales and service office in Wuhan, China.

Systems are supported internationally through a distributor network that includes Metrohm organisations across the United States, Canada, India and the Middle East.

Automated Lab Systems was the company Marc van Beelen founded in 1998 and the direct predecessor of Alsys International. It designed, built and serviced laboratory robots for wet-chemistry sample preparation, beginning with the first Pick & Place robot and later the oleochemical analysis robot introduced in 2005.

Automated Lab Systems made the company’s first international deliveries, to Israel, in 2010. In 2019 the business was reconstituted as Alsys International, carrying forward the same design lineage, customer base and installed systems.

Alsys built its first Pick & Place robot in 1998, after founder Marc van Beelen met a representative of ICL who was interested in the existing automation concept but saw room for improvement in its design and quality. Van Beelen rebuilt the design, and that robot became the progenitor of every Alsys system since.

The same year, he founded Automated Lab Systems to produce and service the machines. The Pick & Place principle — a gripper moving real sample containers between preparation stations — remains the architecture behind today’s High-Performance and Compact Robots.

Yes, Alsys International is a family business, owned 100% by the De Clercq family with no external investors and no outside funding. That ownership shapes how the company works: direct communication, personal relationships with customers, and decisions made for the long term by the people who own the business rather than for a reporting cycle.

Alsys Asia is a joint venture established in 2020 between Alsys International and Forbon Hubei Technology Ltd, serving customers in China and the wider Asian market. It operates a sales and service office in Wuhan, Hubei, giving Chinese customers local support for systems installed in the region.

Alsys systems are already running at fertilizer sites in Hubei province, including Huangshi, Xianning and Wuhan. Building a lasting position in Asia is a stated long-term ambition, pursued together with local partners rather than through direct expansion alone.

Alsys International operates globally. Headquartered in the Netherlands with offices in Germany, the United Kingdom and China, Alsys serves customers across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the Americas through its own teams and through an international network of analytical instrument partners and distributors, including Metrohm. Projects are engineered in the Netherlands and supported locally worldwide.

Alsys robots run in quality control laboratories on three continents, in process industries including fertilizer and agricultural inputs, chemicals and petrochemicals, oleochemicals, mining and minerals, and commercial contract testing. Because Alsys works with established analytical instrument partners rather than building its own office in every market, commercial and service coverage extends well beyond the countries where systems are currently installed — including markets Alsys has not yet delivered into, where a project can be specified, delivered and serviced through the local partner organisation.

New markets are opened continuously, most recently through expansion in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Laboratories anywhere can request a Design Study directly from Alsys in the Netherlands, and support arrangements are agreed as part of that study, so location is not a limiting factor in whether a project can proceed.

Alsys has been building laboratory robots since 1998, giving more than 25 years of experience in automating wet-chemistry sample preparation, with founder Marc van Beelen active in laboratory automation since 1992. Robots built in the company’s earliest years have just been replaced by new Robots from Alsys.

That longevity is measurable in the installed base: average recorded system lifetime is over two decades in continuous 24/7 QC duty, and one mining customer has run an Alsys robot for around 14 years and now operates a fully digital production process around it.

Alsys International names five core values: innovation, transparency, reliability, integrity and involvement. Transparency is taken literally — the facilities and production process are open to visitors — while reliability refers to building systems that serve customers for years, and involvement to close, continuing collaboration with customers.

These values sit alongside a stated position on automation itself: that robots do not replace people, but free them to focus on more valuable work.