Fabrice Billard, fiscal year 2025 unfolded amid geopolitical uncertainty and market disruptions. How do you assess Burckhardt Compression’s performance?
Fiscal year 2025 was indeed a demanding year. Many customers postponed investment decisions due to geo political tensions, trade uncertainties and macroeconomic volatility. In addition, the Swiss Francs appreciated against major currencies.
Despite these headwinds, Burckhardt Compression delivered a strong performance. We maintained near-record sales and further increased profitability, underscoring the strength of our business model. We are gradually increasing productivity and adapting our cost base to the new market situation. At the same time, we continued to invest in innovation, progressed on our sustainability roadmap and expanded our global footprint — all essential to secure the company’s long-term success.
Do the global megatrends — population growth, energy security and the energy transition still underpin Burckhardt Compression’s strategy?
Yes, more clearly than ever. The conflict in the Middle East has shown how crucial it is to ensure stable and se cure energy supply, especially in Europe and Asia. The fuel and energy shortages in these regions clearly highlighted the need for additional investments in energy storage, gas pipelines, and transportation infrastructure for applications such as LNG and LPG.
At the same time, the Middle East conflict has also uncovered the need for energy-importing countries to further develop their own energy sources and electrify their economy. When the market recovers, we expect significant investment in renewable energy infrastructure, including solar panels, low-carbon fuels and biogas. All these applications require compressors and we stand at the forefront of these developments.
How is the company progressing with its Mid-Range Plan 2023–2027?
We continue to make progress across all four pillars of the Mid-Range Plan: strengthening our core business, improving operational excellence, transforming and building new growth avenues, and enhancing our business foundations.
In the past fiscal year, we have opened nine new service locations and by acquiring the company ACT we have significantly increased our spare parts production capabilities in the USA. We also opened new growth areas through the acquisition of Fornovo Gas, a European leader for compressing biogas and compressed natural gas. Biogas is a growing sustainable application and with Fornovo Gas’ strong customer base and reciprocating com pressors in the lower power range, we are complementing our product and service portfolio, especially in Europe.
With regards to operational excellence, the company has improved its competitiveness by adapting its structure in Switzerland and growing its Global Service Center in India. Staying true to our sustainability commitments, we enhanced our business foundations by reducing our greenhouse gas emission intensity by 32%, staying well on track to reach net zero in 2035. We also successfully rolled out a new Enterprise Resource Planning across our Services entities in Europe.
We maintained near-record sales and further increased profitability, underscoring the strength of our business model.
And what about the achievement of the Mid-Range Plan financial guidance in the current geopolitical landscape?
We remain confident about the positive impact of global megatrends, which continue to underpin the achievement of CHF 1.2 bn in sales and the target EBIT margin range of 12% to 15% over the coming years. However, the business environment has faced considerable disruption over the past 12 months and we had to delay the achievement of the company’s Mid-Range Plan guidance. We will communicate a new timeline as soon as there is again more clarity in short-term market developments.
Having a leading position among compressor providers in the Marine segment, how did that market develop in the past fiscal year?
The market for LNG applications continued at a good pace. We could celebrate our largest ever order in this market with the supply of 14 boil-off gas compressors for seven next-generation LNG carriers for Hanwha Ocean. This is a true testament to our R&D efforts as the equipment ordered will come from a new compressor platform developed for LNG tankers running on high-pressure engines and equipped with the latest LNG tank storage technologies.
It was also a successful year winning orders in applications beyond LNG. For example, we secured a land mark order for the world’s first purpose-built ammonia bunkering vessel, developed in cooperation with Nissin Gas Engineering.
Speaking of technological advancements and looking toward artificial intelligence, what steps has the company taken in terms of innovation?
Our major R&D efforts focused on developing new or enhanced products for marine applications. In the Services Division, we also installed a large-scale metal 3D printer at our Winterthur site, marking the start of in-house additive manufacturing for spare parts. As for digital services, we launched a new module of the PROGNOST®-NT condition monitoring system. Now enhanced with AI, it proactively identifies compressor failures and supports customers in implementing predictive maintenance concepts.
In addition, we are launching several AI initiatives to transform the way we are working in our core processes, like Sales and Engineering and in our supporting process es. The Executive Management is leading a cross-func tional task force including AI experts, process owners, and passionate employees, so called “AI Power Users”. The aim is to implement selected strategic AI projects which will benefit customers, and to empower all employees to use these new technologies in their day-to-day work.
What are your priorities for the next 12 months?
Our priorities are successfully delivering our project backlog and navigating the volatile market conditions with a lot of agility. Agility means, on the one hand, focus ing on growth across applications and regions worldwide that are developing very dynamically, and, on the other hand, adapting our set-up to new market realities where required. We will continue to invest in our future, with a new spare parts production center in Vadodara in India, and a new Systems factory in Pune, also in India. We will implement AI where it adds value, helping us to better serve customers and further improve our competitiveness.
I would like to use this opportunity to sincerely thank our employees around the world who have demonstrated remarkable resilience and dedication in the past fiscal year. Their commitment is instrumental to keeping our ambitions on track.
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