Adding value to industrial gases Messer Benelux

ADDING VALUE TO INDUSTRIAL GASES

Messer Benelux is the service leader in the supply of industrial gases. Philip Yorke spoke to Frank Borgenon, the company’s commercial & technical director, about its innovative customer services.

Messer is the largest owner-managed industrial gas company in the world and has been associated with the industrial gas industry for more than 115 years. Its subsidiary for The Netherlands, Messer BV, celebrated its 25th anniversary last year. The Messer Group manufactures and supplies a wide range of gases including oxygen, nitrogen, argon, carbon dioxide, hydrogen and helium. In addition, the company produces inert welding gases and special gases for medical use and tailor-made gas mixtures for highly specialised applications. The variety of gases available from Messer is as broad as the type of industries that utilise them. These include the steel and metal industries, chemicals, food and pharmaceuticals, as well as the automotive, electronics and high-tech environmental industries.

Today industrial and medical gases are indispensable in a large number of sectors and Messer supplies them on a customised basis by developing innovative application technologies. In addition to its core business, Messer also provides components for producing, storing and using dry ice, as well as supply systems, cutting systems and oxyfuel technology. In 2013 the Messer Group employed more than 5400 people and recorded sales of over €1 billion, of which €200 million was invested in a new plant and new technology.

Evolving products and services

Messer Benelux is leading the field in the process of evolving from a traditional gas company to a full-service supplier in the gas market.

“We want to make the lives of our clients as easy and efficient as possible by decreasing their administrative costs and by providing key information for them where and when they need it. It’s an opportunity for us to help them to optimise their resources,” said Borgenon.

Messer Benelux has developed service packages for its food clients. The company ensures the extended shelf-life of its clients’ edible products by delivering food gas mixtures and an after-sales service package to follow it up.

Borgenon added, “We are able to make a difference by offering a complete service, including installation. Besides delivering gas into storage tanks, we also deliver gas in cylinders and have managed to ensure that each cylinder has a barcode. With our ‘cylinder tracking system’ our clients can follow the lifecycle of each individual cylinder.

“Today we have our Benelux headquarters in the Antwerp harbour area, which is a strategic location for the many chemical manufacturing companies. The gas market is a very mature one and as such it is also very competitive. Our aim is to achieve a 2 per cent growth rate on top of the market evolution. We can achieve this by being more efficient than our competitors, and by being closer to our clients.”

“As part of our growth strategy we have established a new ‘cylinder filling facility’ at Antwerp. At this plant we can fill up to

600,000 cylinders a year. We have also invested in a CO2 recovery facility. Our bECO2 plant is the largest CO2 recovery plant in Belgium. We are making high purity CO2 for a variety of applications: freezing edible goods, fertilisers in greenhouses, transport cooling, food gas mixtures and so on.

“We are also the market leaders in water treatment for the consumer market. We dissolve CO2 into drinking water to ensure optimal Ph levels. Furthermore, with our cryogenic gases (liquid nitrogen) we are able to freeze down to -191ºC.

“Today we have more than 22,000 clients, ranging from consumers who need one cylinder a year to manufacturing companies to whom we deliver three times a day. This wide variety demands a client-specific approach. On-going investments

Like other subsidiaries in the Messer Group, Messer Benelux has an on-going programme of investment in new plants and technologies. Recently the company invested over €7 million in a new cylinder filling plant in Antwerp, which followed a €17 million investment in a state-ofthe-art CO2 recovering installation situated at the same site. In Belgium, the company operates a modern filling station for all industrial and food gas mixtures and its bECO2 CO2 recovery plant recovers over 100,000 tonnes of liquid CO2 per year. In The Netherlands there is also an extensive cylinder filling station, as well as a modern Acetylene plant. n

For further details of Messer Benelux’s innovative products and services visit: www.messergroup.com