RetroFIT+

Only 2% of the world’s buildings are newly constructed each year. This means that concentrating on existing buildings represents the most significant global opportunity for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing energy efficiency. The rate of renovation will, however, need to be doubled if the ambitious climate targets stipulated by such initiatives as the European Green Deal are to be achieved. Upgrading existing buildings also requires highly experienced engineers and technicians, which limits overall output capacity. Consequently, this initiative intends to support customers in eliminating bottlenecks and streamlining processes.

One example of a RetroFIT+ project executed during the reporting period was the installation of Belimo Energy Valves™ completed in spring 2023 at Providence College's campus (Providence, Rhode Island, USA). The retrofit with Belimo Energy Valves™ allowed the school to meet their cooling needs with the existing chiller plant configuration, thus saving the cost of buying and installing a new chiller, amounting to an estimated USD 0.5 million to USD 1.0 million in savings.

Grow Asia Pacific

The aim of this initiative is to safeguard the Group’s market leadership in the most rapidly expanding building market. Most decisive for the success of Belimo in Asia is its focus on China and India, the world’s two most populous nations.

In China, Belimo purchased the existing Shanghai location to account for additional capacities and space for warehousing, customization, logistics, an experience center, and offices. The building will be increased from 8’000 to almost 19'000 square meters. In 2023, refurbishment of the building into a sustainable lighthouse project featuring the China Three Star and LEED Platinum certification has started. Furthermore, Belimo opened its 14^th hub office in Zhengzhou this year as part of the accelerated growth strategy for China that was started in 2017. With this, the Company has substantial coverage of all the major economic regions and will now scale up on these hubs to support sales.

In India, the main pillars of the strategy are a focus on specific vertical markets such as data centers, pharma buildings, and hospitals' by building up the sales network for advising consulting engineers and end users, plus the expansion of local presence through the establishment of hub offices, especially in high-growth regions.

Digital Customer Experience

The Digital Customer Experience initiative is directed at enlisting a digitally adept generation of technicians and engineers as digital tools and interactions gain ground in the HVAC industry.

In 2023, Belimo started to implement a CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) software to improve the quote-to-order process. Once implemented, it will strengthen the customer relationship management system. The main goal of the project is to improve the quality of quotes as one of the Company's main touchpoints to customers and prospects and be ready for the digital customer experience and process integration needs of all business partners. It will also offer insights into the quoting process to better make data-driven decisions.

To further drive the Digital Customer Experience initiative, BIM (Building Information Modeling) specialists were appointed in selected subsidiaries, which will further strengthen Belimo's capability to properly support customers who are in need of CAD and BIM files, be it single component files – where Belimo can assist with more than 100 different file formats – or entire Revit libraries.

Damper Actuators and Control Valves

The largest sales contribution in the growth plan for the period leading up to 2030 is expected to come from damper actuators and control valves. This expectation is underscored by a dedicated initiative for growing the business and expanding market leadership by leveraging the economies of scale that result from having the biggest share of the market. Over the next few years, Belimo will be making extraordinary investments in the fundamental renewal of its core platforms for both damper actuators and control valves, while at the same time fully integrating its sensors and meters product range. This will allow a seamless design, installation, and commissioning experience across the product range offering, as the field devices will become more integrated and require consistent interfaces in the evolving building automation architecture.

Sensors and Meters

While damper actuators and control valves control air and water flows, sensors are imperative for measuring temperature, relative humidity, pressure, air quality, and flows. By sending their variable readings to the Building Automation and Control System (BACS), sensors represent a critical link between the indoor environment and the HVAC system. They are imperative for optimizing indoor air conditions in the interest of comfort, health and safety and the overall system’s energy efficiency.

Metering remained entirely separate from this world until Belimo launched its Thermal Energy Meter in 2021. This marked the first time that a harmonized flow and thermal energy meter brought together the worlds of certified thermal energy metering and comfort control, further reducing the operational energy consumption associated with comfort. It can be used standalone or combined with the Belimo Energy Valve™, enabling glycol measurement and tenant billing, thanks to its MID certification (Measuring Instruments Directive).

In the coming years, Belimo is focusing on further expanding its range of sensors and meters and increasing its market share.

Digital Ecosystem

In the coming years, most BACS will evolve into cloud-based and Building IoT (BIoT) systems. In light of these trends and the increasing interest of building operators in energy data and predictive maintenance, the digital connectivity of Belimo devices will be of increasing importance. A well-designed digital ecosystem will allow for a seamless integration, providing easy access to data from damper actuators, control valves, sensors and meters. With Belimo already recognized as the leader in this domain, leveraging platform capabilities, edge logic, and enabling seamless access to device data will all become a strong point of differentiation and a source of additional growth.