Content area
Full Text
Siemens VAI Metals Technologies is focusing on the BRIC countries as the regions of greatest potential for its steelrnaking plant while increasing its emphasis as a service provider to maintain and update plant under contract to a customer.
MOSCOW in May was the venue of Siemens VAI Metals Technologies' third annual Media Summit gathering the technical and financial press from across the world.
Russia was chosen for the 2009 event as Siemens is focusing on the BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China as being those with greatest potential for growth, in particular following the economic crisis which saw many projects slow or stop since Q4 2008.
Nevertheless, as of March 2009, Siemens MT and its related subsidiary Morgan Worcester, USA still had 515 projects on its order list and in FY 2008 (to September 30th) the order intake for Siemens Industrial Solutions (of which Siemens VAI MT is a major contributor) was euro8.415bn. Of the MT projects, 85 were valued in the range euro10-20M, 32 up to euro50M and 12 at up to euro100M.
In a joint presentation by Dr Richard Pfeiffer, CEO Siemens VAI Metals Technologies and Werner Auer, CFO of the same division, they recognised that the dramatic fall in demand and prices for steel since August last year has led to a number of projects being postponed or even cancelled. They accepted that this could necessitate a renegotiation of price for some projects.
JensWegmann, CEO Siemens Industrial Solutions (IS) said the Group's emphasis was changing from completing greenfield projects and major revamps to more modest modernisations and service providing, the latter accounting for 27% of order intake in 2008 with the plan to raise this to 29% by 2010 (Fig 1). The strategy of the Group during the current recession was to focus on growth countries; strengthen local competence and added value, provide leaner technology and manufacturing and expand the service business by adopting the 'IS Solution House'. This provides a cross portfolio competence covering automation, drives, building technology and energy, to the customer in the form of project management, process know-how, design & engineering, commissioning, system integration and life-cycle services.
Although the emphasis is to be on growth countries, the order intake for the first half year FY...