Message from the President
At the time of writing this message the price for a barrel of crude (Brent) stands at 116 dollars. In several countries, notably China and India, riots have occurred over the rising costs of food. Weren't we here in 2008? As a matter of fact, a quick Google search on "food riot" shows messages from 2008 and 2011 on the same page.
The point is of course that nothing has changed fundamentally since 2008 - we only had a short period of respite due to the global financial crisis. Now that the effects of the crisis are slowly dissipating we see a return to the higher commodity prices.
Higher demand means higher prices if the supply can't keep up... for our clients all this means increasing raw material prices and smaller margins, unless higher efficiencies are reached. Higher efficiencies will of course benefit the environment too as less materials (and energy) are wasted. At the next Inogen WorldView® Conference on the 18th of April in Bad Nauheim, Germany we will have a range of speakers addressing efficiency in water, energy and raw materials whilst also discussing the adaptation of brownfield sites to higher margin use. As always we have invited expert speakers from the industry. We hope this will create an opportunity for you to learn from peers, go back to your country and apply the latest thinking on resource conservation at your own facilities.
I look forward to welcoming you all at Bad Nauheim on the 18th April.
Peter
President and CEO