Oerlikon expects positive future even in COVID-19 pandemic

24 Apr '20

3 min read

Pic: Shutterstock

With its long-term strategic customer investment and numerous opportunities, Oerlikon is seeing a positive future even during the COVID-19 outbreak. The company is a leader of plant solutions and systems for the production of chemical fibres, such as polyester, nylon and polypropylene, used in fabrics and functional clothing and for technical textiles.

The sales markets for manmade fibre systems and equipment have been primarily located in China, India, and Turkey for many years now. Together, these markets, above all China, make up the lion’s share of the project landscape at Oerlikon Manmade Fibers. And this is paying positive dividends at the moment. Because the production facilities of the major manmade fibre manufacturers in China have been systematically fired up again over the past few weeks, with capacity utilisation in-creasing consistently. New projects are being discussed, the company said in a press release.

“Long before the coronavirus situation developed, the major manmade fibre manufacturers in China had decided to reverse-integrate their production chains to include petrochemicals in order to expand their portfolios with targeted investments, to reduce their dependence on a single product, to optimise their costs and ultimately to acquire greater control over margins in a global volume business”, segment-CEO in the company Georg Stausberg said.

While China is already pursuing and implementing its ‘From Oil to Yarn’ business model, the other market players are currently still focusing on the ‘From Melt to Yarn’ concept. Even though businesses in India and Turkey are presently still temporarily severely impacted by the coronavirus situation, their long-term commitment cannot however be questioned, as the company-internally-agreed master plans will be systematically implemented moving forward.

“The investments in petrochemical systems are based on long-term strategic considerations and are resulting, even during the coronavirus pandemic, neither in short- and medium-term economic dips, nor in changed customer behaviour. For these reasons, we are currently continuing to look positively towards the future at Oerlikon Manmade Fibers. With orders on our books until 2023, we have created a very good cushion for ourselves. We have to thank all our customers, who have consistently placed their trust in us despite the challenging times we are currently in. We would also like to thank all our employees who remain highly-committed at their mobile workstations at home, servicing the markets throughout the world, providing customers with intensive online consultation on technology questions by means of video conference, continuing to manufacture our high-end technological products in superlative quality under the given coronavirus protection measures at our assembly and production sites worldwide and successfully assembling and commissioning the systems on-site, in part also remotely in collaboration with our clients’ staff,” Stausberg said.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (GK)

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