Industrial Info's World Expansion Helps Clients Uncover New Business Opportunities

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Written by John Egan for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Industrial Info Resources (IIR) opened research offices on three continents last year--Galway, Ireland; Perth, Australia; and Beijing, China--to better help customers uncover business opportunities outside North America. These three offices join Industrial Info's Sugar Land, Texas, headquarters and its existing Cordoba, Argentina, office, to bring clients the most comprehensive, current, and accurate market intelligence on industrial project spending around the world.

"In 2009, we decided that if we were going to serve our clients on a global basis, we needed to significantly expand our global footprint outside the Americas," said Ed Lewis, Industrial Info's chairman and chief executive. "Our new offices in Ireland, Australia, and China complement work being done in our offices in the U.S. and Argentina."

Click on image at right to view a map of IIR's global coverage.

Lewis noted that the current industrial market is more dynamic and more globalized than ever before, which means that market intelligence needs to be confirmed and current in order to strengthen clients' abilities to pursue business opportunities. "Around the world, Industrial Info is tracking nearly 17,000 projects in various stages of development, with a combined total investment value [TIV] of about $5.2 trillion," Lewis said. "We couldn't track all of those projects if we just operated from Sugar Land, Texas."

To learn more about steps Industrial Info took last year to strengthen its clients' global business-development activities, see January 6, 2010, article - Industrial Info Uncovers New Business Opportunities for Companies by Expanding and Improving Market Intelligence Around the World.

The overseas expansions mean that IIR's researchers now speak more than 40 languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Italian, Polish, Russian, Latvian, Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Korean, and several Chinese languages and dialects. Local language skills, as well as knowledge of local customs and cultures, are essential to conducting accurate research on industrial projects in countries around the world, Lewis said. "Having researchers in the field who speak the local languages helps us serve our clients by more effectively identifying and updating project spending activities."

Case in point: the dramatic changes in the Brazilian sugar industry, where mills are adding electric generators so they can sell electricity to the nation's electric grid. Brazil will host the Olympics in 2016, but there are questions about whether the nation's electric system can fully meet the expected surge in demand for electricity. And Brazil's electricity challenges are not all in the distant future: Last November (2009), the lights went out in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and many other cities in Brazil and Paraguay after the failure of transmission lines connected to a large hydropower station caused tens of millions of people in Brazil and Paraguay to endure a two-hour blackout.

Before the November blackout, Brazilian leaders had already embarked on an ambitious project to install new generation units and expand existing power islands at sugar mills across the country. The new generators will burn sugar waste, called bagasse, to generate electricity. Using their Portuguese language skills, researchers in Industrial Info's Cordoba, Argentina, office have identified more than 1,300 electric generation or cogeneration units at Brazilian sugar mills--all of which represent potential business opportunities for companies that construct and maintain power generation equipment. Nearly $1.9 billion of electric generation investments will be made in Brazil's sugar mills between 2010 and 2014, according to Randy Godet, Industrial Info's vice president for food and beverage industry research. For more information on the Brazilian sugar industry, contact Randy Godet. "It would be difficult if not impossible to have identified those business opportunities if we conducted research solely in Sugar Land, Texas," Lewis said.

Having researchers on four continents enables Industrial Info to more rapidly answer clients' questions. Based on client feedback, Industrial Info enhanced the "Ask Us" feature in its PECWeb product to allow subscribers to email their inquiries to Industrial Info's researchers. (Previously, these inquiries could only be made via telephone.) Because it has researchers working in multiple time zones across four continents, Industrial Info can more rapidly answer client inquiries, within a quick turnaround time. The enhanced "Ask Us" feature also allows PECWeb subscribers to monitor the progress of their inquiries, as well as view answers to all of their previous requests. Click here for an overview of the "Ask Us" feature.

Industrial Info Resources (IIR) is the leading provider of global market intelligence specializing in the industrial process, heavy manufacturing and energy related markets. For more than 26 years, Industrial Info has provided plant and project opportunity databases, market forecasts, high resolution maps, and daily industry news.