How has KSB proven to be resilient in the last year?

We have been present in the Middle East for a long time now, and our business—especially in Dubai and the UAE—was fairly focused on the project business: water supply, wastewater, desalination, power plants, industry, everything related to pumping stations, district cooling, infrastructure, construction, and so on. From a business point of view, during the pandemic we had to change our attitude and approach gradually and try to win more day-to-day business. From a technical and tools point of view, we are all used to having on-line meetings. Our business was focused on meet-ing with customers, discussing bigger projects, shaking hands, agreeing on specs and T&Cs, consultancy work, and finally winning a project. Now, this wasn’t possible for more than a year; fortunately, some of this has been restored, though we had to adjust our attitude completely. The third thing is that we have—up to now—only very limited manufacturing capabilities in the UAE. We do a great deal of work with services, engineering, and in-country value; however, we predominantly get products from our overseas factories and sell them to customers. There is a great deal of added value here from our services and our engineering team. As a result of the pandemic, we had significant problems; factories were closed, delivery times went up, and we faced challenges handling this with our customers.

What is your perspective of the resiliency of the UAE?

The customer is number one for us, especially in a crisis. For a long time, we were not allowed to go onsite, and we did everything we could to support and help our customers, especially with our service company in Abu Dhabi.

What is the importance of the UAE and Dubai for KSB?

KSB’s strategy has always been to remain close to its customer and provide excellent support. We have a service team of nearly 100 people in Abu Dhabi. This is our general approach, and the strategy for UAE and Middle East is currently following this policy of having more local content.

What is your assessment of the last few years, and how do you see product innovation changing in the coming years?

One thing that is extremely important here is the support we provide to our customers. We have our own teams in the company that can assist customers and work together with them to plan any kind of fluid handling systems and to select the right solution for every application. This is our strength, and this applies to both pumps and valves.