Gea Group Aktiengesellschaft: Doing Business In The Middle East

Document Type

Book Chapter

Source of Publication

Actions And Insights - Middle East North Africa: East Meets West

Publication Date

1-1-2017

Abstract

GEA Westfalia Separator Group, a subsidiary of international GEA Group, has come a long way in its 119 year history. In May 1893, Franz Ramesohl and Franz Schmidt applied under No. 14625 for a design patent for a drive arrangement for milk centrifuges to the Imperial Patent Office. Since those days the company strove to produce better products and offer better services than the competition. The aim of the organization from the word 'go' was to produce superior work under the 'Made in Germany' label. Steffen Bersch, Vice President Service International, reinforced this status as he confirmed 'basically what is key for us, is that our companies in the group have a very detailed knowledge of our customers, products and processes and hence 90 per cent of our products today are market leading'. The company had become an international brand, and well on its way to becoming a global operating company, it had built new manufacturing facilities in Wuqing, China and Bengaluru, India in addition to the already existing European sites. With such megatrends like 'steady growth in global population', 'urbanization and the growth of the middle-class', and 'rising energy cost and environmental regulations', the company had seen these as growth drivers for its food and energy sector of business, which made up more than 70 per cent of its sales in the world. Sunil Kumar, General Manager GEA Middle East FZE, pondered as to how the company could seize such opportunities in the high-growth Middle East markets? GEA had always been steadfast in its objectives of product innovation and fast and reliable customer service. Service lead times continued to be between 4 and 48 hours. This customer focus leads to a 90 per cent rate of reputational (word-of-mouth) business in the Middle East region. The company has faced challenges like lower cost competitors from Italy, India and China whose products were priced between 20 per cent and 50 per cent lower than GEA. The other challenge faced by GEA pertained to their Middle East markets with countries such as Syria and Iran that almost shut down for business. In the 1970s and 1980s, Iran used to be the company's leading market in this region. How can GEA executives cope with these macro-environmental opportunities and challenges?

ISBN

978-1-78190-413-8

ISSN

2048-7576

Publisher

Emerald Group Publishing Ltd

Volume

3

First Page

183

Last Page

200

Disciplines

Business

Indexed in Scopus

no

Open Access

no

Link to Full Text

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