Air Liquide's new strategic plan underlines the importance of hydrogen

To achieve a comprehensive performance, ADVANCE is structured around four priorities:

To deliver a strong financial performance

With ADVANCE, Air Liquide is taking action today while preparing the future. It is rising up to an ambitious challenge: maintain its growth momentum while pursuing its CO₂ emission reduction targets and investing in the markets of the future.

Three objectives define the company's ambition when it comes to performance:

• An acceleration in sales growth reaching a pace of 5 – 6%/yr on average.
• A return on capital employed (ROCE) of more than >10 % starting from 2023.
• A reduction of its CO₂ emissions in absolute terms starting around 2025.

To achieve this, the company will rely on the optimisation of its capital resources and on the improvement of its operating margin. The latter will improve by more than +160 bps over four years (2022 – 2025), by acting on several levers: a dynamic pricing policy, regular efficiencies, and an active management of its portfolio of activities.

At the same time, investment decisions will be increased to a record level, to reach approximately €16 billion over the 2022 - 2025 period, half of the industrial investments being dedicated to the energy transition. On average, the annual amount of industrial decisions increases by +45%.

To decarbonise the planet

With ADVANCE, Air Liquide confirms its leadership in the decarbonisation of the industry and in the emergence of a low-carbon society in which hydrogen plays a decisive part.

The reduction of CO₂ emissions is a major challenge for the large players of the industry and for heavy-duty mobility. This represents a pool of opportunities for Air Liquide. To address this huge market and to accompany its Large Industry customers in their path to decarbonisation, the Group has a large portfolio of technological solutions and services. It notably includes the supply of low-carbon gases, CO₂ capture and management, as well as solutions to transform our customers’ industrial processes. The Group is committed to decarbonising its own assets - with the objective to start reducing its CO₂ emissions in absolute terms around 2025. Within the context of its Sustainable Development objectives, Air Liquide aims to reduce by a third its emissions by 2035 and to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 while supporting its customers in their decarbonisation process.

Technological innovation to open new markets

With ADVANCE, Air Liquide aims to contribute to the development of key sectors for the future, where it intends to reinforce its positions, leveraging on innovation and technology – two major assets of the Group.

The Group will focus on five new markets:

• Hydrogen mobility, and notably heavy-duty mobility: a very high potential market in which low-carbon hydrogen will play a key role.
• Electronics, where the digital revolution represents a real development opportunity.
• Healthcare, in which the company's value-based approach, which improves quality of life for the patient at the best cost for the health system, responds to major societal issues.
• Industrial Merchant, whose growth is driven by environmental challenges and by new usages, notably digital.
• High technologies, including space, deep cryogenics and the quantum industry.

Acting for all

In the context of ADVANCE, Air Liquide aims to include the perspective of its direct stakeholders, as well as those of society at large.

Read the article online at: https://www.globalhydrogenreview.com/special-reports/23032022/air-liquides-new-strategic-plan-underlines-the-importance-of-hydrogen/