Rockwell sees reasons to be cheerful

Despite a challenging year, Rockwell Automatiion achieved some significant successes in the UK in 2009, including in the process industries, Mark Daniels, the company’s field business leader, industrial automation, said at a 2 Dec press conference in London.

A diverse portfolio allowed Rockwell to target growth areas such as utilities and infrastructure, said Daniels, who also reported business wins over tradtional DCS vendors in the process space. He declined to identify any specific projects here, but said the in-roads were made mainly in the nuclear and chemical industries.

Looking ahead, Daniels said power generation, including emission reduction programmes on coal-fired power stations, offered significant potential in the coming year. He added that renewable energy, such as wind and tidal, was now a strong performing market that presented significant opportunities. Early indications, he added, suggested 5-6% growth in business overall compared to 2009.

Intergrated safety was identified as a key market driver, Daniels noting that as many as 400 people had this year signed up for seminars just to learn aboutintegrating safety technology into their systems. He also forecast an increasing role for Rockwell’s relationship with Cisco in meeting increasing customerrequirements “for tracking data and for getting the intelligence to the right person in the right place and at the right time.”