Page 13 - Industrial Plants 2014

Editorial

An Outlook for the Italian

Engineering

and Contracting Industry

Nello Uccelletti
Animp President
ndustrial Plants”, Animp’s yearly publication for In offshore markets a renewed interest for investments in
the international audience, aims at highlighting West Africa and a gradual interest in the East has been
some significant recent achievements of the confirmed.
Italian engineering and contracting industry. As in The volume of new investments, particularly in upstream,
previous years, also this number illustrates remains impressive and rising, even though the political
“Iseveral significant projects, currently under uncertainty in some regions, the doubts about the long-term
execution or recently completed by our industry in growth of some energy-consuming countries and the
international or domestic markets, with a special focus on difficulty of closing the financing arrangements have caused
main challenges of today: new markets, new technologies, delays, cancellations or major modifications of many large
complex project organization, challenging logistics, projects.
advanced systems, competitive supplies. Indeed, many projects today are becoming more and more
The Italian industrial plant supply-chain (world-class complex in terms of size, technological characteristics,
engineering and construction contracting as well as extreme logistics and generally very challenging
equipment supply) is today further broadening its horizons environments.
towards an ever more globalized and highly competitive These projects require high technical and management
market. Our companies are forced to be ever more flexible skills in which many of our companies excel. This know-how
and ever more innovative, in order to apply successful can be an asset to compete against newer entrants from
execution models, mitigate the increasing project risks as emerging markets, often less experienced and not as well
well as generally to apply a number of very innovative organized. To remain successful in this market, our
solutions. companies have therefore invested in complementary skills
and job tools, but also in strategic alliances etc.
The prospects in our oil & gas sector point to continuing
growth globally, despite the slow-down in the so called While we thank the Italian industry working in the oil & gas
developed countries, and – more importantly – problems sector for their strong support to Animp, we confirm our
generated by the rapidly growing costs. Therefore, there has commitment to provide a continuously improving range of
not been any change of pace in the global markets over the services to all our affiliates and to represent the Italian
past twelve months. The most important geographic areas supply-chain of the engineering and contracting industry in
for our industry are once again the Middle East, North all global contexts.
America and Asia, both for onshore and offshore businesses. Nello Uccelletti

IndustrIal Plants - May 2014
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