Insight

A review and preview of the global fastener industry

A wide cross section of global fastener business leaders have contributed their retrospective of 2015 and thoughts on the prospects and challenges for 2016. We asked them to consider not just economic and financial issues but also technology drivers for the fastener industry and to identify priorities for the upcoming year. Here is Fastbolt's article:

Fastbolt GmbH
Ekkehard Beermann, managing director

When we look from our importer and wholesaler perspective on the most significant developments, trends and characteristics for 2015 we must look at both the buying and the selling.

The purchasing part in the Far East certainly was price wise dominated by two main factors – the continuous decrease of the raw material price level, as well as the significant impact of the highly volatile foreign exchange market on the effective import price level for our goods. This constantly changing buying situation has certainly not always been easy to manage throughout 2015, but it once again underlined the importance of well considered purchasing decisions and efficient buying methods and processes.

On the sales side our three European companies saw firm demands from our customer base – comprising 1,800 fastener distributors all over Europe – until the summer holiday season, while September and October showed a slight reduction in overall demand volume. A busy November, as well as some key strategic decisions that we took in the second half of 2015, make us look optimistically towards 2016.

As a continuation of our 3 year plan to gradually enlarge our product range we have now decided to buy additional land at our German location and to start construction of another warehouse extension. This will result in a stock capacity increase of about 50% for Fastbolt Germany – as well as additional space for material handling and processing. Construction is planned to finish by summer 2016 and the new stock items we want to add to our range in 2016 will be available at the same time. We strongly believe that this substantial increase in capacity – and the stock range extension that goes along with it – will be of strategic importance for our Group’s mid and long-term future. At the same time all our European distributor customers will benefit from a wider variety of high-quality imported stock items available at the three Fastbolt warehouses in Germany, the UK and Portugal.

While we expect an overall slight growth in demand within the European distribution market in 2016, our focus lies mostly on following our own set agenda – the continuation of our sales and marketing strategy by adding new items to our product portfolio without losing the strength and the competence of a range specialist.