A restructured organisation centred on profitable power engineering divisions has been created to rescue the insolvent Babcock Borsig group. The new company will keep the BBP name under a new holding company, Babcock Borsig Power Systems, which officially started operations on November 1st.
According to Horst Piepenburg, chairman of the interim management board, the restructured group as "a player of significance on the markets" will be concentrating on the key areas of technical service, power engineering and environmental engineering. Helmut Schmitz, the provisional insolvency trustee, said that to date 12 000 jobs had been saved of the 21 000 jobs at risk when insolvency was filed in July. The company is trying to secure a long-term future for many more jobs, and is still looking for business partners and buyers for group assets.
Piepenburg is optimistic that the most important competencies of Babcock Borsig AG can be salvaged in an area where it has 300 000 MW installed capacity, mainly coal- fired power plants, worldwide. The service business, currently operating with good profit margins, is to be the centre of the rescue company. On the plant engineering side, the new board intends to concentrate on the strong market sectors of utility steam generators, on design engineering for combined-cycle plants, components for waste-to-energy systems, flue gas cleaning facilities and on licences. Market and product side activities will be stepped up, especially in Europe and the Near East. The sales opportunities are good, according to Piepenburg: "The substantial need for retrofitting will produce a boom in environmental engineering over the next few years. In power engineering as well we expect to see significant market growths from the shutting down of technically obsolete power plants." Insolvency specialists have so far managed to achieve stabilisation at the main subsidiaries of Schumag, TUMA, Babcock Industrial Piping (BIR) and Babcock Borsig Espana. The Lazard investment company has been commissioned to find partners and buyers for companies to be disposed of. Babcock Gießerei GmbH, Omnical GmbH, Pipe-Tec GmbH & Co.KG, Schumag AG and TurboLuftTechnik GmbH are up for sale.
l BBP is categorically denying allegations that have appeared in German newspaper Die Welt concerning the existence of asbestos related collective law suits filed against BPP's American subsidiary BBCC and its resulting danger of insolvency. It is, they maintain, a healthy corporation. There are no law suits on hand nor have any been announced. All claims put forward by asbestos victims in the USA are being passed on to the American corporation Ashland Oil, the previous owner of the BBCC undertaking, which has accepted responsibility and issued a full indemnity.
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