Business briefing

UK manufacturing star to shine

The crisis in the financial services sector and the fall in the value of the pound could rebalance the UK economy back towards manufacturing, economist David Smith has suggested in an industry briefing event, hosted by Siemens Automation & Drives. The diverse range of manufacturing markets, lower exposure to the US economy and UK consumer downturn, is supporting “strong growth and excellent export figures for manufacturers,” said Smith, who urged UK manufacturers to increase efficiency and productivity and target China and India as significant opportunities for their high value-added activities, rather than a threat.

Bullish forecast from Invensys

Invensys chief executive Ulf Henriksson, has highlighted the group’s progress in transforming its financial position over the past year through an improved operating performances across the businesses, the disposals of non-core activities for good value and the successful negotiation of a pensions settlement. “Today we have around £200m of cash and … effectively debt-free,” said Henriksson.Looking to the current financial year, Henriksson said: "The global energy and infrastructure markets for Process Systems and Rail Group remain strong and we expect them to continue to grow. At Controls, we expect at least to maintain its operating profit and cash flow performance despite continued softness in some of its markets.

Honeywell, Wood Group strengthen turbine control link

Honeywell and Wood Group are to expand their partnership, which has been operating since 2003 in North America, to deliver an automated turbine control system for power generators worldwide. “More power-generation companies are upgrading their older control systems because they are becoming increasingly harder to maintain and simply don’t meet the demands of today’s marketplace,” said Gary Schwartz, MD of Wood Group Turbine Control Services. “Power plants are discovering that tight integration between systems such as boilers and turbines is essential to improve overall system operations and, therefore, business results.”

Autodesk to acquire Moldflow

Autodesk Inc. is to acquire Moldflow Corp., which supplies software that models the melt processing behaviour of plastics materials, for around $297m. Moldflow has 285 employees and reported revenues for its fiscal 2007 of $55.9 million. “Moldflow is a leader in computer integrated manufacturing and brings strong analysis and simulation capabilities to our Digital Prototyping solution,” said Carl Bass, Autodesk president and CEO.

Swedes buy industrial PC supplier

Swedish industrial PCs manufacturer JLT has acquired its UK distributor CMC as part of a expansion plan. JLT’s computers, which were first developed for the Swedish military, are widely used in harsh outdoor and industrial environments by multnationals including Fedex, Volvo and Rolls Royce. CMC was formed in 2004 by Mark Dale-Lace and has established a user base among the military, emergency services and manufacturing companies. JLT has appointed Mark Muslek, CMC’s previous managing director to lead its business plan.

Bosch Rexroth targets CEE, China, India ... and US wind farms

Bosch Rexroth AG has posted 2007 sales of Euro5.4bn, up 8.8% on the previous year; with business up 8.3% in Germany and double-digit sales increases in China and India. The drives and controls company invested Euro377 million euro and increased employee numbers by around 3100 – including 1800 new jobs in Germany - taking its global workforce to almost 33,000. Central and Eastern Europe is one of the key drivers of our growth, CEO Albert Hieronimus told the group's annual press conference. “The development we are seeing in India resembles that undergone by China some years ago,“ said the CEO, who also forecast that the US would continue to be an important automation technology market, due in particular to industrial hydraulics and large gear systems for wind farms. “Order volumes are looking good and we are expanding our capacities. We therefore expect a two figure percentage increase in sales for 2008,” said the CEO.

British Energy in £20m nuclear alliance

British Energy has started a five-year alliance with AMEC, Atkins, Frazer-Nash Consultancy and Serco Assurance - worth up to £20 million a year - to provide engineering and technical support to its nuclear fleet of stations. The partners will work alongside British Energy in the Technical Support Alliance (TSA), while other suppliers will become involved as business needs develop. The contracts may be extended beyond the initial five years. The TSA is the renewal of a previous arrangement which has already delivered more than £80 million of work and provided British Energy with access to specialist third party technical capability.

Hydro’s true grit with US wastewater acquisition

Hydro International plc has purchased Eutek Systems Inc. a US-based supplier of equipment that removes fine grit, sugar sands, abrasives and fixed solids from wastewater streams. The deal, said Hydro, will help it to expand its grit-removal sales in the US and complements its existing wastewater grit-removal portfolio. The combined businesses have annual revenues of about £30m.

AMEC acquires oil sands business

AMEC plc is to acquire in-situ oil sands business Bower Damberger Rolseth Engineering Ltd (BDR) from its owner-managers for Cdn$45 million (£22 million) in cash. With 85 employees, Calgary, Canada-based BDR provides technical engineering services to the 'in-situ' heavy oil, gas and oil production industries and has a particular expertise in thermal recovery of in-situ oil through its steam-assisted gravity-drainage (SAG-D) methods. In-situ deposits lie too far below the surface to be recovered by open-cast mining.