Alfa Laval targets new growth markets

Frankfurt, Germany – Alfa Laval has identified district cooling, LNG (liquefied natural gas) and renewable energy projects as three “booming” new markets that will help drive its growth over the next few years, according to its president and CEO Lars Renstrom.

“Demand for district cooling is growing faster than district heating mainly because of rising living standards in the Middle East and Asia,” said during press conference at Achema, 15-19 May in Frankfurt.

The Alfa Laval boss cited a recent order from a Saudi central cooling project for 50 heat exchangers, each weighing 20 tonnes and employing a titanium construction to avoid salt-water corrosion.

In the LNG arena, Renstrom noted increasing output from Qatar -- the world’s largest gas field -- where the gas is extracted, liquefied and sent to US, Asia and Europe. The UK, he said, represents the main market in Europe, due to its established infrastructure and a current decline in North Sea supplies.

“LNG is a very interesting area with massive investment going into importing LNG including a lot of (projects for) LNG carrier ships, the Alfa Laval boss commented.

Renstrom went on to describe renewable energy, particularly biodiesel, as another key growth area for Alfa Laval. This emerging market, he noted, was being driven both by high energy costs and political issues.

While the market for biodiesel is still developing, Renstrom noted that the EU is moving to increase the content of renewable sources in fuel to 5.75% by 2011, which would require the building of 80 new ethanol plants.

Alfa Laval supplies mixer, heating, cooling, separation and decanter equipment to the biodiesel industry and has well-established technology positions in processes such as pre-treatment, fermentation, distillation, dehydration.

For the group as a whole, Renstrom said Alfa Laval was continuing to find new applications based around its core technologies; centrifugal separation and heat exchangers. The company, he added, had an “excellent global position” – sales of Euro1.8 billion in 2005, split between Europe, 50%; Asia, 30%; and the Americas, 20%.