Knud Andersen, CEO of AH Industries, has worked 25 years in industrial companies across refrigeration, OEM, and turbine manufacturing. He was appointed to his current position in mid-May last year, bringing with him a keen understanding of the wind-energy industry and the other industrial markets in which AH Industries operates.
The company offers solutions in applied technology, wind energy, marine and offshore, plus cement and minerals. Each market presents its own challenges that AH Industries has had to address. Its no secret to anyone that the wind sector and the cement and minerals sector have been a little bit under pressure for the past two or three years due to the financial crisis in 2008. Therefore, we have had to work intensively on improving performance, which has happened in very good dialogue with our board, our owners, and the organisation on defining how we must win the battle. When I had the pleasure of starting as CEO here, it was already very well on the way and I only had to re-energise some of the projects and put a little bit more speed into them.
A lot of the things that I received responsibility for were already in good progress and shape, so I focused on that. We experience cautious optimism in our business and, like a lot of other companies, we feel that we have improved our cost efficiency so that we can compete and were ready for growth again. Therefore, our focus going forward will be growth driven, because we have already rationalised our business in a good manner. We feel we are in a good position to develop again on the top line.
Since AH Industries is a decentralised company of different divisions, collaboration across the different arms of the business helps streamline operations and offer a more comprehensive service. We have very strong managers in the five divisions, all with a long and proven track record for being good leaders and for being very experienced in the business they are in. This means they are very competent partners for our customers to have a dialogue with and form a partnership with, which is important for us. We have people who know their business in detail as managers. My function is more to work closely together with these very good colleagues and their organisations.
