Endress+Hauser’s (E+H) chief operating officer (COO) and member of the Group’s Executive Board, Michael Ziesemer, revealed while visiting the company’s Australian head office this month that he hopes to double the Australian arm of the business between now and 2015.
Addressing an audience of 20 customers, business partners and members of the press at the company’s Australian head office in North Ryde, New South Wales, Ziesemer spoke about how current automation trends will affect Australian Industry in the future.
Ziesemer also claimed that the Australian business could double its size over the next five years.
Ziesemer said that automation and information technology (IT) integration, energy management and energy produc tion, and water treatment, would all be future growth areas for E+H.
“E+H Australia was founded nine years ago, and we now have 62 people working here. The Australian market is about growth. We have developed in a good way, but we still have relatively small market share,” Ziesemer said.
According to Ziesemer, the company plans to grow in the Australian market by a massive 100 per cent between now and 2015, and will be looking at bringing completely new technologies into the market in the future. This includes energy-autonomous sensors that claim energy from the process, which Ziesemer said is definitely on the company’s radar when it comes to long term development.
Ziesemer’s visit to Australia was one- year shy of the local subsidiary’s 10-year anniversary on 1 April 2011. Ziesemer spend his week-long trip in Australia visiting key customers in Sydney, Newcastle, and Brisbane, and getting a feel for the Australian market. According to Ziesemer, the Australian market is competitive and very mature when it comes to process instrumentation.
“It was a great experience to be here in Australia, to see the industries and this country developing. It’s nice to see that the automation and instrumentation industry can contribute to the further development of this country,” Ziesemer told PACE.
For Ziesemer, the global process instrumentation market will experience three main challenges in the next five years: market competitiveness from Chinese companies; IT, service-oriented architecture (SOA) and web-technologies will change automation architectures; and customers will increasingly expect solu tions over components and technology.
According to Ziesemer, the beginning of 2010 has been promising, partly due to the importance Industry places on long-term technologies such as energy management and energy production. Ziesemer also claimed that the global need for drinkable water is another driver for the company in 2010 and beyond. Ziesemer told delegates that E+H will remain true to its instrumentation roots, and does not plan to expand out of the process instrumentation market. “We will remain a specialist,” he said.
The company will also continue to invest 10 per cent of its net sales each year into R&D, including into new wire less technologies.
“We are available for our customers in all parts of the process industry but we are not satisfied. We want to continue to grow,” Ziesemer said.