Foster the Chinese Process Safety Market

At the end of 2009, Halma announced the semiannual report (from Apr. to Oct.) of fiscal 2009. In this period, the turnover of Halma levels off that of the same period of last year, which has been good performance against the financial crisis. What’s more, Halma China was even far beyond others with a 52 percent growth rate. Among the branches of Halma China, those relevant to process safety also achieved very satisfactorily and corresponding products were widely applied in the Chinese industrial fields such as petroleum, petrochemical and nuclear power and so on. Current Halma Today specially interviewed Mark Lavelle, Chief Executive of Halma Process Safety Division, via which his views about the Chinese industrial process safety market can be known.  

Halma Today (hereinafter abbreviated as HT): Branch companies of Halma Process Safety in China, such as Castell, SFC, Netherlocks, Fortress, STI, and HFS, all rocketed in 2009. So, congratulations, and herein we wonder what is the most important factor facilitating the above performances in your opinion?

Mark Lavelle (hereinafter abbreviated as ML): Two factors are crucial for me. The first one is the demands and attitudes of the Chinese market on the segment of industry safety. Though lots of westerners believe safety may not be the important and primary factor in the Chinese industry market, majority Chinese companies pay more and more attention to industry safety. And the second is that technical personnel of our Halma Process Safety Division know very completely various industries and processes of safety production and help them design and introduce appropriate safe systems. Only by means of many years of design experience, can the industry safety of designed products and technologies in various industries be really ensured. It can be indicated from the above reasons that the capacity of process safety market trends to be bigger and bigger and we’ll continue sparing no effort to foster this market.

 

HT: Since 2009, Castell has started to carry out localized production in China. Then, will there more process safety corporations entering China to conduct production?

ML: The reason why many companies choose to build factories in China is that they think costs can be saved. However, this is not the strategy of ours. For us, we produce products in China to satisfy the needs of Chinese markets. When customers need localized products and prompt delivery, the Chinese production mode we developed can just meet their needs. We anticipate, in the next one year and a half, two or three above safety companies will build factories in China.

 

HT: Some specific industries of Halma Process Safety Division in China such as chemical, nuclear and packaging, etc. all achieved success. What’s your view on these segment industries?

ML: Actually, our process safety companies worldwide own the knowhow of multiple segment markets, far beyond those you mentioned. As China expands infrastructure size to meet the requirement of industries’ quick growth, our business in China also rockets accordingly. We expect this development tendency can continue. In the meantime, we also anticipate other segment fields with prominent performances, including power generation and distribution (non-nuclear power), mining, automobile, automation, and general engineering, etc., can achieve some growth in the world’s other areas as well.

 

HT: What’s your general impression for the Chinese process safety market?

ML: China is a developing country with the economy quickly rising. However, we can see that there are still more industrial injuries in China. Compared with advanced countries, its four industrial safety indexes are relatively backward. Take the death rate per 100 million yuan GDP as an example, it was 0.7 in 2005, 0.558 in 2006, and 0.413 in 2007, which indicates that the figure is indeed decreasing gradually, but ten times that of developed countries and close to that of Korea in the previous years. In the full 2007, 86 ten-above people death accidents occurred in China, plus seven 30-above extra serious accidents. In fact, many of them are caused by human negligence or faults of safe operation programs and can be avoided through Halma’s safety interlock technology.    

Through our efforts in these years, there have been a few enterprises in China started to use Halma’s safety interlock technology, such as a couple of nuclear power stations, Sinopec, PetroChina, CSPC, BP, BASF, Alcoa, and Zoomlion, etc. There are more and more Chinese companies realized that 70 percent industry safety accidents are caused by human error that can be avoided. These unnecessary casualties can be completely avoided by using Halma’s safety interlock technology. According to the statistics of China in 2007, at leased 70 thousand lives can be saved and avoid 100 billion above loss. Along with the constant improvement of Chinese enterprises’ safety awareness, the cake of process safety market will for sure become bigger and bigger.

 

HT: We know brands STI and HFS of Halma Process Safety Division are being merged, would you like to tell us something about the merging? 

ML: Brands STI and HFS differ greatly in products and market customers. Both are French brands, and their respective worldwide management, development, production, and marketing are all conducted in an independent French company. The final mode of their sales work will be developed in accordance with the marketing conditions, but both brands will for sure keep their original characteristics.

 

HT: It is said that Halma Process Safety Division has occupied up to 65 percent global safety interlock product market. What’s your anticipation for the share in the Chinese market?

ML: Our rich experience of various industries in the world is unapproachable for any other competitor, which facilitates us in a very favorable position in the Chinese market. The Chinese customers value a lot our products and knowhow, just like we are in a more mature market. All of these indicate that we’ll obtain the market share same with those in other areas.