Challenges & Opportunities

The sector is confronted by a number of challenges and opportunities. These include:

• the requirement to reduce the energy consumption of pumps (in EU countries, pumps account for a significant proportion of energy consumption in industrial and commercial applications)
• addressing adequately draft EU legislation in areas such as energy efficiency, technical standards and health & safety
• supporting the framing of new EU legislation in such a way that the goals of the legislators are achieved without compromising the ability of pump manufacturers to compete internationally
• maintaining a competitive edge against global competition through matching more closely the needs of customers
• the requirement to move from competing at a regional to a global level, as many traditional end use sectors such as chemicals and petroleum refining shift investment patterns to low labour cost countries