Like many other companies in 2014, FOSS was hit by the Russian import ban on a number of European foods. It has hit the European food industry hard and this has meant a slowdown of investments among a wide range of FOSS’ main customers.
At the same time FOSS managed to strengthen its position in a number of other markets – not least due to new technological solutions enabling faster and easier analysis results for the food industry. FOSS has thus maintained a high level of investment.
All in all this development meant that in 2014, FOSS increased the number of employees in Hillerød with an additional 60. This is the result of a relocation of development and production activities from Sweden to Denmark as well as further investment in research and innovation.
The total revenue for FOSS grew organically with +2%. Due to currency fluctuations, the total revenue for FOSS decreased by 2% to 1.72 billion DKK in 2014. The operating profit is 314 million DKK.
“We have experienced significant challenges in 2014. This counts first and foremost for Russia, but we have also seen that China has cut down on investments due to a large reform of the publicly-owned laboratories, and that there is now a greater price pressure in the market. We expect this will continue. On the other hand we can see that our fundamental business model based on being an industry leader within innovation and development has proven its durability. Therefore, we also chose to maintain a high level of investment even though we knew that it would have an impact,” said CEO Torben Ladegaard.
178 MILLION DKK INVESTED IN INNOVATION
In 2014, FOSS introduced 6 new models in its product range. The new models are based on three different solutions:
Focus on food safety. Pollution and adulteration of food is a major problem in many places. With a new technological solution FOSS has developed equipment that can detect and instantly determine if a food has been contaminated or adulterated.
Faster and accurate analytical solutions that can be integrated in the production system to ensure optimum use of raw materials and desired production quality automatically.
Better use of data. A number of new software solutions ensure that FOSS customers can improve management and control of their global supply chain.
In 2014, a total of 178 million DKK was invested in research and innovation. This corresponds to about 10 % of the Group’s revenue and is an increase compared to 2013. All in all, one out of six employees is employed in research and development.
“We continue to invest significantly in research and development. In the next few years the number of middle-class consumers in the world will increase with 2 billion. This will demand an enormous effort from the entire food industry to make production as efficient as possible. FOSS has a clear market leading position as creators of the necessary analytical solutions for this process. This position we must maintain and develop”, said CEO Torben Ladegaard.