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| Viewpoint | ||
January 31, 2022
VIEWPOINT 2022: Joe Booth, CEO, Altus Group
Thankfully Altus has always been a predominantly remote organization and so we had the tools in place to support remote working before Covid took a grip. This meant that infrastructure and IT were not a challenge for us in the way that they were for other organizations. Clearly the pandemic had a huge impact on our business levels with revenue reduced by half from one year to the next, but being an established company, and having worked through recessions before, we knew that the market would recover. We focused on our strengths and weaknesses to support our future recovery and increase our resiliency from the first instance, knowing that we might now have time to focus on the business in the slower period. We outlined production processes that we wanted to bring into our portfolio, internal infrastructure and systems to improve the skills and efficiency of the team we already had and focused on our support services. Due to those efforts in increasing our long-term resiliency in 2021 we have almost had a full recovery. Booking 90% of our best year ever and having supported the largest number of customers and greatest ever number of new partners. We would like to think that we have been nimble and as the market recovers further in 2022 we will continue to see more than our fair share of the recovery. Has your company been affected by the inventory shortages of semiconductors and electronic components in 2021? Are you able to hire enough qualified employees? We have been somewhat affected in a positive way because we support component management and traceability systems such as component counters and goods in scanning tables. These processes have been very popular in the UK and Irish market as our partners look to have a more accurate representation and constant audit of the components that they have at site. We have also been affected by price increases from particular suppliers on certain processes where the raw material costs have increased. The largest difficulty for us has been having to contend with the volatility and lack of transparency in shipping and freight. Costs have changed dramatically year on year as global companies look to restock and replenish to meet demand after a period of letting stock levels diminish when the demand disappeared. Many companies that were deploying a low inventory model have certainly paid for that now. With new capital equipment the delays are less critical, albeit still painful. What are your expectations for the electronics assembly industry in 2022? We are optimists at Altus but of course a lot depends on how local governments stimulate and encourage growth in manufacturing and certainly how the policies and the mechanics and frictions of Brexit play out. However, we have very favorable market ingredients and lots of potential for further growth. It has been really uplifting to see large grant opportunities for capital equipment as well as more and more awareness and funding for STEM subjects in schools which indicates that manufacturing is hoped to contribute more to GDP both now and in the future. I think that we will see further market consolidation and more mergers and acquisitions through 2022 in the CEM space. This is simply because of the age of the company directors owning a large portion of the private CEM market, larger players are buying their resiliency through expertise (sector, model) or by scale. Speaking on the UK, we are positioning ourselves in a sweet spot of battery and sustainable energy systems manufacture with the backbone of strong medical, military and industrial OEMs. We also have a very strong and mature market of CEMs who would be ready to support global customers as our policies start to look further afield than Europe. Have you or will you travel again to customer sites or industry conferences in 2022? Absolutely! In fact, we already have. As soon as the government policies allowed, we visited existing and new customers and also hosted training and demonstrations in our Application Facility. We also attended Productronica in Munich to meet with many of our long-term partners. We have become very capable of operating remotely and with all the advantages of increasing efficiency and reducing cost, but relationships and trust are of upmost importance in the capital equipment sector, so meeting face to face and at Productronica was important to us. Shows like this also help to review new equipment opportunities and expand our network. Joe Booth, CEO Altus Group http://www.altusgroup.co.uk |
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