IN FOCUS

Cardo Group reports decreased sales and earnings in the interim report for the first half year 2005, while the pump business (ABS Pumps) shows a positive trend in the infow of orders. The company announces a group-wide reorganization into a purely operational industrial group aimed at business-to-business customers.

In the first six months of 2005, the volume of orders in the KSB Group increased by 14.3 percent compared with the same period last year. Sales revenue increased by 12.8 percent.

To expand their product range for painting and surface treatment technologies, KSB launched two new vertical low-pressure centrifugal pump models in early July 2005.

Allweiler announces its intention to participate in WTT Expo, the first trade fair to focus on heat-transfer and heat-carrier engineering, from October 4 through 6 in Karlsruhe, Germany.

ITT Industries announced that it has acquired the business and assets of Ellis K. Phelps & Company (Phelps) of Apopka, Florida. Phelps has long been the largest U.S. distributor of products sold under ITT’s Flygt brand for the wastewater pumping and treatment market.

Dresser-Rand Group announced that it has priced its initial public offering of 27,000,000 shares of common stock at $21.00 per share. All of the shares are being offered by Dresser-Rand Group Inc.

Allweiler modernized its stator production facilities to make them more environmentally friendly and energy efficient. The plant was acquired from the New-York Hamburger Gummi-Waaren Compagnie in March 2005. Since then, Allweiler has been producing all stators for its progressing cavity pumps there.

Hoffman Specialty, a unit of ITT Industries, has updated its web-based Steam Component Selection Program. The new, enhanced program makes it even easier for engineers and installers to quickly and accurately choose the components they need, and save the information for their records.

ITT Industries, Inc. announced the appointment of Usha Wright to the newly created position of Senior Vice President, Director of Global Workforce Strategy. Since 1997, Wright has been Vice President, Associate General Counsel and Director of Environment, Safety and Health (ESH) for ITT.

In times of interlinked business solutions and streamlined processes, technical software has to be like a piece in a puzzle to fit a company’s requirements. Linking Spaix to other software is therefore an important step. Among recent developments by VSX is the Spaix ProjectAdapter to connect with ERP systems of other third party software.