Download Annual Report 2003 - Mühlbauer Group

FOCUSING
HIGH-POTENTIAL FUTURE MARKETS
Ladies and gentlemen,
shareholders, employees, partners
and friends,
after the world-wide economic crisis that has continued
in the meanwhile for three years and difficult
framework conditions in the technology sector there
are increasing positive signs of a gradually recovering
world economy. We have exploited these weaknesses
and made solid investments in the extension of
our production capacities. Parallel to this we have
developed new technological solutions which extend
from the acquisition of biometric data in the personalisation
of passports and as a consequence have
broadened our technological basis yet again. The
result is a world-wide best positioned company
platform and an improved fundamental basis which
allows us to accompany the expected long lasting
recovery in all business sectors and to profit directly
from the subsequent possible growth.
Our expectations are supported by market increase
in demand for technological solutions since the
beginning of the year 2002 from the Semiconductor
Related Products business sector and the persistent
growth in the Precision Parts & Systems business
area. As a consequence the given increase in orders
in the Semiconductor Related Products area for allied
products following a deficit of over 55% as a result
of the economy compared with the year 2000, was
3.6% in 2002 and 73.3% in 2003. In the Precision
Parts & Systems product area we booked a growth
of 45.6% (2002) and 30.8% (2003), in each case
measured on the comparable period of the previous
year. Moreover, compared with the previous year a
growth of 13.0% could be recorded also within the
Smart Identification product range headed by the
core chip card sector.
As a consequence, the world-wide continuing standardization
processes, more especially, however,
due to the worldwide security standards passed in
very recent times by the ICAO (International Civil
Aviation Organization), have been responsible for
the fact that almost no decisions were made for any
ID card projects in the report year. To be added to
this is that the planning, implementation and introduction
of state projects require a lead-in time that
is not without significance as is well known. It also
by this development was the smart label technology,
which is used in ID documents on the one hand
depends on the realization of such ID projects. But
on the other side the thoughts being made by worldwide
trading concerns in respect of providing goods
with RFID technology will still continue to partial
extent.
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