FLSmidth has achieved authority approval of its first acquisition in China. Together with a minority shareholder, FLSmidth has started a company to market and sell air pollution control products to the cement industry in China. This local company is groundbreaking for FLSmidth as it combines local presence and relations with global technologies and resources. It will make FLSmidth, overnight, a powerful player in the multibillion dollar Chinese market for environmental control technologies.
The founder company Chinese Sino Environment Engineering Development Co., Ltd. (SEPEC) continues as a minority shareholder and brings a large reference base and contact network from the cement industry in China both on a corporate and a plant level.
After a couple of years with organic growth in China, FLSmidth has now, through the acquisition, embarked upon the second stage of its China strategy to become a local player with local cost levels.
"FLSmidth and SEPEC are the perfect fit. FLSmidth's strong technological platform coupled with SEPEC's strong organisation, reputation and customer base in China will enable us to develop air pollution control products, which are uniquely designed together with the Chinese customer and fit his specific requirements," Group CEO Jørgen Huno Rasmussen comments.
The local company will market FLSmidth's highly efficient air pollution control products and thereby help Chinese cement manufacturers to fulfil the new and stricter emission standards imposed on the industry. As the majority shareholder, FLSmidth will retain the IP rights to the technology. The Chinese market accounts for half of the total world market for air pollution control equipment.
"With China's increased focus on environmental aspects as stated in the 12th five year plan, the timing of FLSmidth's local expansion is just right," says CEO of FLSmidth China, Anders Bech.
In the future, the plan is also to sell applications into the attractive and very similar markets for biomass fired boilers and waste incineration plants in China.
