Hexagon Buys ITRES

Hexagon AB has acquired ITRES Research Limited (“ITRES”), a Calgary, Canada-based provider of high-performance airborne hyperspectral and thermal imaging systems. The move is said to help strengthen Hexagon’s ability to deliver multi-sensor geospatial data for advanced airborne mapping and analysis.

The acquisition reportedly joins together two complementary portfolios under one provider. Hexagon contributes a suite of airborne sensing and processing products for geodata development—including LiDAR point clouds, high-resolution optical imagery, digital twins, and integrated workflow software, flight planning tools and data delivery systems.

ITRES adds high-performance hyperspectral and thermal imaging sensors that operate across wavelengths.

These capabilities allow ability to collect more analytical datasets from a single airborne survey. Fusing multispectral and thermal data with LiDAR and optical imagery opens capabilities for ground surface assessment, object classification and thermal property detection, while Hexagon's software ecosystem helps teams process and act on data faster. The result is a multi-sensor mapping platform – and opportunities for hybrid information collection and data fusion.

“Geospatial professionals are looking to extract deeper insight from each airborne survey,” says Anders Svensson, president and CEO of Hexagon. “By integrating hyperspectral and thermal sensing into our portfolio, we further expand the range of information that can be captured and analysed. Combining complementary sensing technologies helps geospatial professionals improve classification accuracy, better distinguish materials, and derive more reliable thermal insights, supporting more advanced and specialised applications."

By adding hyperspectral and thermal imaging capabilities to the airborne workflow, customers can gain insight from airborne surveys for environmental applications (such as urban heat mapping, water quality monitoring) as well as disaster response applications (including locating active fire hotspots, identifying people or objects through heat detection, and providing responders with georeferenced thermal imagery).

“We welcome the ITRES team and its exceptional capabilities within airborne hyperspectral and thermal imaging to the Infrastructure & Geospatial Business Area. From a technology perspective, the portfolios of Hexagon and ITRES are highly complementary, enabling us to meet our customers’ full range of needs in advanced airborne mapping,” says Henning Sandfort, president, Infrastructure & Geospatial Business Area.

ITRES will be reported within Hexagon's Infrastructure & Geospatial (formerly Geosystems) Business Area, within the Scanning & Mapping Division, and is expected to generate revenues of around 13 MEUR in 2026, accretive to net profits from day of completion and with margin initially slightly below the Infrastructure & Geospatial Business Area average.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.