The outlook for 2015
The New Year begins with best wishes and, in Germany typically, with immediate new worries regarding the economic development of Europe and the rest of the world. Continue reading
After getting off to a good start, the year 2014 quickly saw the crisis in Ukraine, the souring of relationships with Russia and long-term damage to the investment climate; to be followed by the current concerns with impending elections in Greece, which are pushing the euro to a new low.
Many wiser opinion-formers are nevertheless making widely known, in the press and elsewhere, their thoughts on economic progress in 2015. What are the New Year prospects for a medium-sized company like ours, with its production site in Germany? Will the euro’s low exchange rate and the favourable price of crude oil compensate, at least in part, for the negative investment climate in Germany? Will our customers be able to tackle international competition, while having to cope with new government-imposed burdens like retirement at sixty-three, extra EU contributions and all-round minimum wages?
If anything is certain, it is that 2015 is not going to be an easy year or one promising early recovery. We can only hope that there are no major crises.
Something that we find particularly negative, in addition to all these economic and legal burdens, is the fact that long-term commercial partners no longer stand by their word, and subscribe to the steady coarsening of business etiquette that is spreading inexorably, and which in our view has already become standard practice in the automotive sector. It is unfortunately becoming more and more common in our sector too.
It helps, in a situation like this, to turn out our gaze inwards where we can still live the cooperative, value-based approach and then to look beyond the borders of Germany. This repeatedly shows us how stable and reliable the situation in our country is, and how we – in fact – have relatively little to complain about. The world’s markets continue to demand high-tech solutions with the “Made in Germany” seal of quality; and this is exactly what we offer.
Our products’ maximum reliability under enormous material strain, our high precision and our customer service let us stand out among our international competitors; not as marketing claims, but as repeatedly proven, hard facts. Most of our customers appreciate this, and our future lies in continuing to build on this potential. It is for this reason that Kuhn Special Steel’s worldwide outlook is very good – both for the year 2015 and beyond.
In short: we intend to use ever-improving quality, reliability and customer service to expand our market share, regardless of any pessimism regarding the economic and legal conditions that we currently operate under. This is why we continue to invest in our plant in Radevormwald in Germany, while remaining busy with innovations and regarding the New Year in a positive light.