UK Business Award for Grundfos
The National Business Awards were established three years ago to recognise and reward excellence, best practise and innovation in the UK business community and are at the very pinnacle of all the business awards held in the UK.
In 2004 the combined turnover of the businesses that submitted entries totalled an incredible £337bn that translates to 30% of the UK’s GDP.
Grundfos Pumps Ltd entered the Environmental Awareness Award and were delighted to be a shortlisted finalist alongside of BP, Unilever, Cardiff Harbour Authority and Rockware Glass. Following a gruelling 3 round selection process, including presenting to a panel of judges, the winners were announced at the Gala Dinner at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London.
With such stiff competition from many different high profile sectors, Grundfos realised that although they had excellent credentials in the whole environmental arena, having been at the forefront of developing variable speed technology, being ISO14001 accredited, being committed to constantly improving their products and processes, and developing long term strategic plans to encourage sales of variable speed and renewable energy alternatives, this was still going to be a big ‘ask’ to win.
However, despite the possibly unglamorous and relatively low profile of pumps and pumping systems – Grundfos were announced the overall winners.
Pumps account for 20% of the total of world energy consumption; Grundfos are committed to ensuring that the systems they provide are as energy efficient as possible. With a significant number of new product developments and extensive media and education programmes, sales of variable speed products have doubled in the UK in the past 2 years and now account for 20% of all appropriate sales.
This is a great achievement, but still sees us lagging behind other European countries where appropriate sales are 35% and rising.
One of the main issues that is a constant factor to be overcome when promoting variable speed pumps, is that the specifier is not the end-user and therefore does not pay the energy bills, this means that sometimes the purchase price is the only factor taken into consideration as opposed to the Life Cycle Cost – where the energy used accounts for 80%+ of the total outlay over the pumps life.
Winning an award like this (which was filmed by Sky television and reported by The Sunday Telegraph) is an important step that it will enable Grundfos to get the message across to the broadest possible audience. This award is not just great news for Grundfos, but great news for the whole pump industry.
Source: Grundfos Holding A/S
