Wirtschaftsforum: Mr. Lange, at BEULCO everything revolves around drinking water and its supply. What are your main business areas?

Martin Lange: Today we encompass four business units under the BEULCO roof. These are BEULCO Water, BEULCO Industry, BEULCO Digital, and BEULCO Clean. At BEULCO Water, it's about our products and solutions for water supply. In the industrial sector, we stand by the industry and OEM customers as a development partner and accompany our customers from the initial idea to the product launch. Digitalization is an important cornerstone of our strategy to become more sustainable and also to optimize our solutions and offer even better service to our customers. Under BEULCO Clean, we offer disinfection and cleaning products, among others for the disinfection of drinking water and drinking water systems.

Wirtschaftsforum: What are the current new developments and innovations at BEULCO?

Martin Lange: We have launched the iQ energyGuard, making us unique. With the iQ energyGuard family, private households can now measure their own consumption and are not dependent on companies coming to their homes. Until recently, this was not an issue as energy and water were always available. Now that has changed. In the electricity market, there are similar solutions, but there are no comparable solutions around water and gas. Accordingly, we expect a boom in this area. Just as with our BEULCO Clean products, we are targeting the B2C market again with iQ Guard.

Wirtschaftsforum: Who are your customers and which countries do they come from?

Martin Lange: With Beulco clean and iQ energyGuard, we also target end customers. In the B2B area, we work for water suppliers, for OEMs, but also for manufacturers of pipeline systems for the drinking water sector. Here, the DACH region is our most important market. We are also active in the surrounding European countries. With our digital solutions, we see great global potential, for example in Southeast Asia, in Southern Africa, and in India.

Wirtschaftsforum: What role does sustainability play in the development of BEULCO?

Martin Lange: We expect this topic to become increasingly important, like a hygiene factor. If a company is not sustainable, it will not be able to do business in the future. We have developed a sustainability strategy based on our digitalization strategy and are now internally adjusting accordingly. For example, we have developed a local energy concept for our production. We will renovate our halls and reduce our electricity needs, including through the use of waste heat and the application of photovoltaic technology.

Wirtschaftsforum: What topics and products will be important in the market in the near future? What needs do you see with your customers?

Martin Lange: In the coming years, drinking water fountains in public spaces will become more important. Cities in Europe must offer drinking water in light of rising temperatures. This is creating a new market. Especially in Germany, we see a great demand here. Currently, we have the only solution that not only meets all technical requirements, but is also highly functional and attractively priced. Still in its infancy, we see digitalization as a major theme for the coming years. As we want to be a pioneer in this field, we have, for example, developed a system with the irrigation association to monitor and control irrigation, the iQ HydrON.

Wirtschaftsforum: What are your expectations for the upcoming months of 2023?

Martin Lange: We are facing a real crisis in construction and we are preparing for it. This means that stabilizing our business is an important issue. We think long-term and are currently working on our strategy until 2030. Previously, we did this from the perspective of the entire company, now from the perspective of the four business units.