Asia regional update

We see clear and strong macro drivers specifically related to our end markets in our Asia growth:

- Regulations development, changes and reforms (e.g. China fire regulation reform and Singapore fire standards shifts);
- Significant trend of traditional infrastructure and ‘new’ infrastructure investment upturn post-COVID. That comes with accelerated digitalisation in the built environment, e.g. Internet of Things, building information modelling (BIM), digital twins. Innovation, complexity and more robust information record and management that will drive our lifecycle building assurance proposition stronger than ever
- Increasing overall Asia-Europe trade during and after China-USA tensions etc.


Generally, this is a vast and fast-growing but fragmented market to be consolidated. As a company, we possess distinguished advantages from F&BP BU that we can transfer to our competitive advantages on the local ground: strong technical competence that are products specific, that differentiates us from local competitors and international competitors; and clear leading position in European/UK certification schemes.


Following the group’s positive restructuring in Q4 2020, colleagues across FBP have conducted extensive strategy work focusing on our 2025 market leadership, market share and positioning in different end markets. FBP is clear and ambitious with our 2025 aspiration and NE/SE Asia is again identified as a key part of the overall strategy. There are a wide range of real opportunities over the next three to five years, for example establishing local certification schemes and growing our fire safety engineering (engineering advisory) presence in Singapore and China, and that will be a key part of our 2025 business picture. For 2021 and H1 of 2022, however, our eyes will remain very focused to deliver in the following chosen end markets:

  1. Product certification – initially led by export market (products exported from China / Asia to Europe, the Middle East and Australia), that is where we have unique advantages of FBP product certification in Europe, with CE/UKCA/voluntary schemes. Historically we have not maximised (far from it) our potentials in the Asia market and we will now capitalise our international advantages with stronger local coordination and support, which will be coupled with the strength on customer experience and operational excellence.
  2. Technical (product assessment) – differentiated technical leadership is another critical strategic pillar in our strategy to extend our market leadership. It is identified as a real opportunity to build our technical assessment capabilities for differentiated and value-added services in both Singapore and Hong Kong, where we already see high level existing demand and growth drivers, both short- and long-term.  This will certainly also become a growth engine for our wider testing and certification services.
  3. Testing – initially to focus on the markets for products exported to Europe, the Middle East and Australia. While we proactively look for opportunities of establishing our local testing capabilities which is a longer-term goal, we are looking at more immediate capitalisation of our competitive advantage from the Europe, ME and Australia testing centres of excellence. Brand recognition and market influence in the local market is key and there will be proactive technical presence, marketing campaigns and dedicated external sales resource.

 

THE INFORMATION ON THIS PAGE IS FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY AND MUST NOT BE SHARED OUTSIDE OF THE COMPANY