John Conboy

Dubai, UAE, 16 October 2018: Danfoss is placing strong emphasis on Total Cost of Ownership, said John Conboy, Director of Sales, Marketing and Service, Danfoss Drives Segment, Middle East and North Africa, who stressed that the company is committed to engaging all stakeholders in a project, including the consultant, contractor, end-user and system integrator, to ensure the right technology is being used in the right way. “The dialogue has to go both ways,” Conboy said, “because maybe the scope of the contractor or consultant is purely to deliver a project at a certain price. If the end-user is stating that from the beginning, then that’s how they are driven, that is their KPI.” Touching on the company’s wide spectrum of product offerings, Conboy stressed that while Danfoss has different topologies of technology, and can offer what is required for a variable speed drive, not every drive is suitable for every application or customer and that stakeholders must have a number of considerations in place when it comes to choosing equipment. With the price of energy increasing, Conboy said companies are slowly becoming more concerned with their cost of operation, but that there is still a long way to go for better appreciation of opex over capex.

Conboy said Danfoss is following six global megatrends, which includes digitisation and climate change. “Digitalisation is really about the connectivity of things,” he said, “which will lead to reduced maintenance cost in the future. The more information we can take from those devices will lead to reduced maintenance. It’s estimated that digitalisation alone will reduce the need for maintenance for end-users by up to a trillion dollars, annually, so this is something very much driving our R&D efforts.”

Conboy said that Danfoss is also proactive in cost of ownership’s role under the umbrella of climate change, which is driving effort to educate the market. “When we look at a project now, we give maybe two, three or four options of what supply,” he said. “We make a calculation on which is the best operational option for you to choose in the long run and then we will present that information to the end-user so they are informed as well, so when they are talking to the contractor or consultant, or whoever might be involved in the project, they are aware that there are options available to them.

Speaking on the company’s profile of activities in the region, Conboy said that the United Arab Emirates remains an important market, with Expo 2020 on the horizon and that Saudi Arabia is also seeing a revival, with Danfoss seeing more activity coming up. Egypt, he added, is not a stable economy. Though there are challenges when it comes to liquidity in the market, Conboy said the overall outlook in the region is good. Conboy added that increasingly stringent regulations in the region are slowly making a case for more energy-efficient products.

Hannah Jo Uy is Assistant Editor at Climate Control Middle East magazine. She may be contacted at hannah@cpi-industry.com