The trend of positive growth news from industrial automation suppliers continued this week with significant growth reported by ABB at its annual Automation & Power World event. At the event, held in Orlando, Enrique Santacana, CEO for ABB’s North America region, reported that ABB’s U.S. revenues rose 26 percent to a record $6.7 billion in 2012. He said this growth resulted from its recent acquisitions and “strong organic growth” from industrial clients.
Recent U.S. acquisitions made by ABB that most significantly contributed to the company’s growth include: Ventyx, a utility and energy software provider; Baldor Electric, a supplier of industrial motors and generators; and Thomas & Betts, a manufacturer of low-voltage electric equipment. According to ABB, Thomas & Betts alone added about $1 billion to ABB’s 2012 U.S. revenues.
Organic order growth was reported to have reached 12 percent in 2012 as U.S. industrial customers ordered more products like robots, instruments, motors and low-voltage products to increase productivity and energy efficiency. Other order growth came from utilities increasing investments in new high-voltage transmission lines to upgrade the power grids and adding smart-grid solutions to offer new services and integrate enterprise with operational data.
ABB has reportedly invested $10 billion in the U.S. over the last three years and more than doubled its revenues since 2007 from $3.1 billion. During this period the U.S. work force grew to nearly 20,000 from 8,700. For North America as a whole, including Canada and Mexico, revenues also more than doubled in the last five years to $8.5 billion and the number of employees rose to more than 27,000 from 11,300.
Santacana said that the focus on North America represents a shift for ABB away from centralized manufacturing and toward “regional customization.”
“We’re moving from an era of mass production to mass customization,” he said. “Speed of delivery is taking a more prominent role. This affects pricing and runs counter to the long-distance production strategies” recently used by numerous western companies by offshoring production to Asia.
One facet of this shift for ABB can be seen in the company’s investment in local production via the opening of a $100-million power-line cable factory near Charlotte, N.C. Santacana also noted that the company’s investments in Mexico were not simply driven by a low-cost labor motive. “Mexico is no longer just about low cost labor. It’s about their engineering talent and location” in terms of an export strategy as part of the company’s regional customization focus.
ABB was also recently cited by MIT for being one of its 50 most disruptive companies. ABB made the list for its development of a high voltage DC circuit breaker designed to advance the use of renewable energy. Read more about ABB’s mention in this MIT report as well as learn about the other automation and manufacturing companies that made MIT’s most disruptive list.
