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Henkel is looking for inorganic growth opportunities through Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A), according to its Chief Executive Officer, Carsten Knobel.
Speaking to newspersons at Henkel Inspiration Centre here, Knobel said, “We are quite solid in financial and see opportunities in inorganic growth along with organic expansion plans.”
While the company continues almost equal focus on its both business segments of adhesive technologies and consumer brands, Henkel sees M&A opportunity in the former, while the latter is in the process of consolidation, the CEO said.
When asked about plans for India, Knobel said the company would ‘continue’ to invest in Indian operations. It currently operates a customer experience centre in Mumbai and two innovation centres in Mumbai and Pune. It also opened a Global Technology Centre in Bengaluru last year. Henkel has about 1,000 employees in India, out of 52,000 globally.
“India is an important market for B2B. We continue to invest in laboratory infrastructure and additional capacities in electronics,” he added.
Also read: Global tech service sector records M&A, PE deals worth $57 b: report
Globally, Henkel lined up a ‘strategic agenda for purposeful growth’ based on four pillars of winning portfolio, competitive edge, future ready operating models, and collaborative cultures, the CEO said.
“Our positive growth agenda is paying off as we are already focusing on our two global categories of business for the last 15 months (post-Covid). We started this year well with a 7 per cent growth in both segments,” he added.
In 2022, Henkel earned €22 billion in revenue with equal contributions from adhesive technologies and consumer brands categories.
Within the adhesive technologies segment, the focus is being stepped up on automotive e-mobility, electrification, connectivity, and defossilisation of industry, among others.
The Inspiration Centre Dusseldorf (ICD) set up with an investment of €130 million, would drive innovation and ‘best’ solutions to the customers. “Our customer labs in ICD get us proximate to customers. We are opening a similar centre in Shanghai soon,” Knobel said.
(The writer is a member of the international media team invited by Henkel)
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