Laurent Auret likes to say he has four children: two boys, a girl and a company. Yet it is the last, just seven years old, that is likely to sever its paternal ties first, he believes.

Most entrepreneurs clasp their first-born company close to their chest. Mr Auret sees things differently. Having just brought in a deputy managing director, he plans one day to relinquish control of Neosens to a trade buyer. In time, he expects to move on from the business, which creates and sells devices for detecting contaminants in the water systems of paper-makers, utilities and hospitals.