In the financial year 2007 the Messer Group, operating in its core regions of Europe and Asia and through its subsidiary in Peru, achieved a turnover of €705m and an EBITDA of €154m.
Turnover rose 12% on the previous year, while the same period saw steep rises in energy, raw materials and product delivery costs. The group successfully maintained its market presence in all these regions and in some cases even enlarged it, with a succession of investments boosting this performance.
The Messer Group invested in independent product sourcing, with investment totalling €173m and equivalent to 24.6% of annual turnover. As in the previous year, most of the investment was in the construction of air separation plants for the production of nitrogen, oxygen and argon, indeed the most important investments in Europe saw an air separation plant constructed in Spain to safeguard the growth potential of the existing pipeline system in the Tarragona chemical complex.
Messer also embarked on the construction of air separation plants for on-site customers with whom long-term supply contracts were agreed in 2007. These production plants were designed to supply not only the main customer but also the liquid market and apply to the new air separation plants in the Valais canton of Switzerland, Rumania (Resita) and Bosnia-Herzegovina (Zenica). Some investment was also made in industrial gas bottling, with state-of-the-art bottling plants coming on-line in Denmark and France.
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