Strategic growth, Tech to market and Market studies

Sup­port­ing your deci­sion mak­ing process for suc­cess­ful mar­ket entry, scale up and growth.

 

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Many mar­kets relat­ed to decar­bon­i­sa­tion and clean-tech are grow­ing at 50% per year, or more. Long dura­tion ener­gy stor­age, hydro­gen, CO2 cap­ture and util­i­sa­tion are notable exam­ples. The ques­tion is often whether your com­pa­ny can serve these huge and rapid­ly grow­ing mar­kets with exist­ing or new prod­ucts.

Assess­ment of the mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ty, com­pet­i­tive inten­si­ty, your prod­uct fit and your right to win are essen­tial pri­or to invest­ing in mar­ket entry. They are also key aspects for clean­tech star­tups to con­sid­er as they begin to com­mer­cialise their tech­nol­o­gy.

Draw­ing on my 30+ years in busi­ness lead­er­ship, I can sup­port this strate­gic growth assess­ment process with inde­pen­dent mar­ket stud­ies to sup­port your deci­sion mak­ing process. I have also tak­en engage­ments to sup­port clean­tech star­tups with their strate­gic growth plan­ning and fundrais­ing activ­i­ties.

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Case studies: taking a closer look

Many new clean-tech star­tups are emerg­ing each week. Tak­ing a great tech­ni­cal idea to mar­ket can be a skill that is new to the start­up team. Rais­ing funds is also a chal­lenge that the start­up has not been pre­pared for in their PhD stud­ies. I have sup­port­ed clean­tech star­tups work­ing in the fields of direct air cap­ture of CO2 (DAC), elec­trol­yser crit­i­cal com­po­nents and lithi­um ion bat­tery recy­cling to nav­i­gate their way out of the lab­o­ra­to­ry and into the real world.The issues are often gain­ing a deep­er mar­ket under­stand­ing, prod­uct posi­tion­ing ver­sus peers or alter­na­tives and under­stand­ing key attrib­ut­es of the val­ue propo­si­tion. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion of their mag­ic mix and the nec­es­sary ‘asks’ to sup­port scale up is also essen­tial – to their poten­tial cus­tomers, strate­gic part­ners and investors. My posi­tion in the indus­try as a spec­i­fi­er of equip­ment for projects, con­duct­ing buy-side due dili­gence, and analysing mar­kets gives me a unique clus­ter of insights which I can use to sup­port star­tups climb the tech­ni­cal and com­mer­cial matu­ri­ty lad­ders suc­cess­ful­ly.

For much of my career at BOC Gas­es and Linde Gas, I was respon­si­ble for the Spe­cial­ty Gas­es port­fo­lio glob­al­ly. This prod­uct group is seen as a major growth engine with­in the wider indus­tri­al and med­ical gas­es indus­try. Busi­ness devel­op­ment and plan­ning for growth were per­ma­nent­ly on the agen­da. The skills that I learned are of direct rel­e­vance to indus­tri­al gas­es busi­ness­es that wish to grow in this area and trans­ferrable to relat­ed indus­tri­al sec­tors where the mar­kets were sim­i­lar such as gas analy­sers and gas detec­tion equip­ment.

Since leav­ing Linde, I have sup­port­ed sev­er­al com­pa­nies to plan and exe­cute growth strate­gies that will increase their expo­sure to the hydro­gen econ­o­my and decar­bon­i­sa­tion in gen­er­al. The process gen­er­al­ly fol­lows a route of sit­u­a­tion­al analy­sis, mar­ket assess­ment and busi­ness devel­op­ment. The actions often focus around adjust­ments in the prod­uct ranges and strate­gic focus to exploit growth oppor­tu­ni­ties. The changes have fre­quent­ly been sup­port­ed by train­ing and mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion pro­grammes or M&A activ­i­ty.

The pace of inno­va­tion is intense in com­pressed gas cylin­ders for hydro­gen, indus­tri­al gas­es, and fuel gas­es. The expan­sion of the hydro­gen econ­o­my has pulled for car­bon fibre type 4 com­pos­ite cylin­ders for sta­t­ic stor­age, on-board stor­age, and hydro­gen dis­tri­b­u­tion. Type 1, 2 and 3 cylin­ders have also enjoyed a peri­od of growth and glass fibre wrapped type 2 cylin­ders and type 4 cylin­ders are cost effec­tive alter­na­tives to car­bon fibre for HRS and hydro­gen dis­tri­b­u­tion appli­ca­tions. I have advised a region­al gas­es com­pa­ny on the busi­ness ben­e­fits, com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion strat­e­gy and tech­ni­cal solu­tions for cylin­der prod­uct devel­op­ment. Valve and cylin­der man­u­fac­tur­ers have also sought my advice, includ­ing growth strat­e­gy devel­op­ment with work­shop facil­i­ta­tion and mar­ket eval­u­a­tions. Addi­tion­al­ly, insti­tu­tion­al investors and PE firms reg­u­lar­ly seek my opin­ions on com­pa­nies in this sec­tor to sup­port val­u­a­tions and invest­ment deci­sions.

With 16 years of expe­ri­ence work­ing hands-on with spe­cial­ty gas­es at BOC and Linde, I have deep and broad expo­sure to lead­ing instru­men­ta­tion OEMs and many kinds of gas analy­sis tech­niques. My expe­ri­ence also extends to the mar­kets where these gas analy­sers are used and the leg­is­la­tion changes and indus­try dynam­ics that are dri­ving the growth of sev­er­al appli­ca­tions in this sec­tor. This exper­tise has attract­ed major glob­al instru­men­ta­tion sup­pli­ers to seek my advice. On their behalf, I have under­tak­en mar­ket research for M&A activ­i­ties. My con­sult­ing ser­vices have also been used to devel­op and exe­cute mar­ket­ing cam­paigns in this sec­tor and devel­op sales train­ing mate­ri­als. I also fre­quent­ly write jour­nal arti­cles on health, safe­ty and envi­ron­men­tal top­ics that rely on fixed and portable gas detec­tion equip­ment. Fur­ther­more, research ana­lysts and investors reg­u­lar­ly seek my opin­ion about var­i­ous instru­men­ta­tion OEMs to enable accu­rate val­u­a­tions and guide their invest­ment deci­sions.