Viewpoint – Page 9
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NewsWhat price for an oil bounce-back?
The Air Liquide Board of Directors met on 29th July 2016, during which meeting the Board reviewed the consolidated financial statements for the first half of the year ending 30th June 2016. The Board will no doubt have been delighted with the group’s Gas Services business, but surely ...
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GAWDA Membership Recruitment Effort Firmly Underway
If you’ve ever thought about joining the Gases and Welding Distributors Association (GAWDA), now is a perfect time to look into the many benefits and advantages that membership provides. The Association has launched a drive to recruit new members into the organization in an effort to strengthen, grow, and diversify ...
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Features
Mind the gap
I was asked to make a call with a new sales rep on business we had lost a year earlier. The customer was nice enough to give us an email recapping our past deficiencies including major gaps in communication with his previous lab manager and our account rep (who we ...
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Iran: All quiet on the Western front?
The lifting of international sanctions against Iran sparked excited speculation for the flood of investment that lay ahead. Five months on and talk of the expected gold rush seems to have slowed. So where are we at with Iran’s new wave of growth?
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Concluding the conquest: Airgas acquisition officially complete
So the ink is finally dry on the biggest deal in the industrial gases business in years, with the key signatures committed to contracts and glasses raised across both sides of the Atlantic. It’s official: Air Liquide has acquired Airgas, at a total enterprise value of $13.4bn.
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Upheaval of the US cryogenic tank and trailer landscape
On my way back from the GAWDA conference last week in Savannah, Georgia, I couldn’t help but think about how much the cryogenic tank and trailer industry in the US has been transformed in only a few short years. It’s barely recognisable from what it was only even a year ...
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Energy-from-waste – A troubled technology?
Until very recently, Air Products’ Tees Valley energy-from-waste facilities were held aloft as two of the most innovative renewable energy projects in the world, and the first of their kind in the UK. Now, however, as the company prepares to exit the market at a cost of up to $1bn, ...
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The ‘Brexit’ – a step into the unknown for the gases industry?
Most would agree upon the effects of collapse in oil prices over the last 18 months as it has fallen to as low as $30 per barrel. Similarly, many would acknowledge that the UK steel sector remains on a knife-edge and may be yet to reach its nadir. But the ...
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Social responsibility – How capitalism can make it sustainable
John Keynes and Winston Churchill were both exceptional proponents of free markets and capitalism. Keynes proffered that, “Capitalism is the astounding belief that the wickedest of men will do the wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.”
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Linde's 2015 results: What impact of low oil prices?
The Linde Group’s newly released 2015 results show a group revenue rise of 5.3% to €17.9bn and a similar increase in operating profit, up 5.4% to €4.1bn.
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A serenity in semiconductors
Why increasing stability and a trend for interdependence in the global semiconductor business could be good news for the industrial and specialty gases industry.
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The grand arrival of a new frontier
The Middle East is no longer emerging as the New Industrial Gas Frontier. It’s already here, it’s underway - the New Industrial Gas Frontier has arrived. And a record crowd for this gas world conference here in Dubai again affirms that.
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Getting real about carbon capture
Why would anyone want to bury carbon dioxide (CO2)? Proponents of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology will argue that it’s better to bury CO2 than release it into the atmosphere if the object is to combat global warming. But surely it would be better not to create the problem ...
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Technology and ingenuity can solve the climate challenge
Today we face the dual challenge of achieving both energy security and a positive climate outcome. Renewables are a vital part of the abatement and energy security story. While there is no doubting their importance, they are not the whole answer in the timeframes we face. Energy efficiency is a ...
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Airgas: A long awaited acquisition?
The earth shook in the global gases business last week, with the news that Air Liquide had agreed the $13.4bn acquisition of fellow Tier One company Airgas, Inc., signalling a potentially seismic shift in the structure of the industry.
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Time to re-assess ERP?
With the gases industry arguably maximising its operations more than ever before, Gavin Oberholzer of business solutions provider HSO asks in this exclusive column for gasworld.com whether it’s time to re-assess Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP).
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Why it’s ‘game on’ for new growth drivers in the bulk distribution field
The main factors that drive demand in the bulk distribution equipment industry are mainly new business and organic growth, the replacement of ageing equipment, and any new applications that arise for distribution equipment.
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Innovation – let the good ideas flow
Recently, when visiting our R D Team for a review meeting, Chris Browell our Head of R D, made an observation that left me pondering. He said, “To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. But to the engineer, that glass is ...
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Hydrogen – The green key to renewables
The good news is that more and more energy from renewable sources is being produced every day. The bad news is that far too much of it is wasted. In the ‘use it or lose it’ energy game, intermittent renewable energy (IRR) is suffering. Enter hydrogen – when produced ‘greenly’ ...
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Just crystal ball gazing?
French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher of science Jules Henri Poincaré once stated, “It is far better to foresee even without certainty, than not to foresee at all.” That resonates with me today in Budapest, for very different reasons.
