Market leader in Germany: Bilfinger leading industrial services provider for 13 years

July 21, 2021

• Outperformed the market in difficult year 2020
• Catch-up effects in 2021 - especially for postponed turnaround projects
• Three German companies bundling their strengths

Bilfinger is the largest German industrial services provider - a position the company has now held for the past 13 years in the ranking of market research company Lünendonk & Hossenfelder. With comprehensive services throughout the entire lifecycle of industrial plants together with digital solutions and a strong customer focus, Bilfinger has also been bundling the strengths of three German companies even more closely in the newly established unit Bilfinger Engineering & Maintenance GmbH since March 2021.

In financial year 2020, Billfinger managed to hold its ground in a difficult environment that was impacted by the Corona pandemic and a low oil price. While sales of the 20 leading industrial services companies in Germany dropped by an average of 9.1 percent, Bilfinger posted only a slight decrease in sales of 3.1 percent to €933 million in Germany. The number of employees also remained stable at 6,909 (previous year: 7,051).

'The fact that we are again at the top of the list of industrial services companies in Germany is attributable to the high level of flexibility and above-average commitment of our employees. Their achievements have been extraordinary,' says Niklas Wiegand, CEO of Bilfinger Engineering & Maintenance GmbH. 'It also helped us a lot that we turned to digital processes and applications at an early stage. During the pandemic, for example, we were able to use digital solutions to call in experts from other sites for certain maintenance and repair tasks.

For 2021, the industrial services companies surveyed by Lünendonk expect catch-up effects and growth of between 8.7 and 14.0 percent. These catch-up effects are particularly apparent at Bilfinger with regard to turnarounds: Many of the projects that were postponed in 2020 will be implemented in the current financial year.

In March 2021, Bilfinger consolidated its industrial services in Germany in Bilfinger Engineering & Maintenance GmbH. The move was made with the aim of networking the expertise of various trades even more closely so that customers can be offered a comprehensive range of services from a single source: from engineering and project execution through to integrated services in maintenance and digitalization. Using just one interface, process industry customers can easily and efficiently access the comprehensive expertise of Bilfinger's specialists.