Reflections on 2024 and a Vision for 2025: Strengthening Partnerships, Embracing Growth, and Staying True to Our Commitment to Stakeholders.
A Message from Our CEO:
As the CEO of Sigma Plantfinder Ltd, it’s my duty to be true to our promises and assurances to our stakeholders which include our clients, our suppliers, our staff and our owners. I therefore bear this in mind whilst writing this letter at the end of what has to have been one of the most challenging years in my career.
What we do
We are trusted by most major owners and investors in the foundation piling and geotechnical industry to handle machinery purchase and sale contracts, connecting end users with end users. Our priority is always transaction security to the exclusion of every other consideration. We invest heavily in our purchase security and sales guarantee often to the detriment of our own profit and loss. We believe in long term relationships and we know that these are not built in a day. They can however be irrevocably damaged with one misstep on our part so we take our commitment to our shareholders and investors very seriously indeed.
As the CEO, the buck stops on my desk, I carry responsibility for that during good times and bad. That’s why I write this letter to you all, as part of my commitment to our company and our people.
Next year is our 50th anniversary, we are proud of our achievements, our stability and our longevity and we’d like to celebrate that with you all.
Reflections on 2024
This has been one of the toughest years in recent history outside of major global events such as we saw in 2000, 2008 and most recently 2021. Our great company has been through numerous seismic geopolitical events in its history over five decades but we’ve always made it through and helped our stakeholders prosper.
The phrase that comes to mind is that you make your own luck. This year we’ve been hit all around by global inflation, suppressed earnings on the global stage and several of our major markets in recession for several successive quarters. The people that have succeeded this year and grown despite the odds are those that have refused to accept the status quo and shaped their market rather than letting it shape them and consequently their year.
This year we’ve seen major projects scaled back and postponed. We are seeing good signs from the GCC and the US, these markets promise well for the next few years with large government funded projects in KSA and UAE and the new Trump 2.0 administration ushering in one of the most pro business atmospheres seen in recent times.
We’ve seen some fleets expanding their number and range of piling and geo equipment, others have been at high fleet utilisation but lacked the confidence to invest ahead of a long hoped for increase next year. We’re proud of all those that have made it through the last 12 months, well done to you all and to those that have grown in the face of all the odds, more power to your elbow!
UK and Europe continue to be sluggish in the major construction arena, exacerbated by political disruption in two of the EU’s major economies France and Germany. Businesses of all sizes in the UK have been badly impacted by the current government’s budget increasing taxes on both companies and individuals. Other markets such as West Africa and the Far East are generally down but are showing signs of coming out of hibernation with clients reporting more tenders and increased contract values overall in the last quarter of the year.
International freight has been tough to execute, we are seeing increased costs and transit times due to the Red Sea issues, added to that the shipping lines are becoming increasingly unreliable in general, cutting scheduled stops out of their schedules for RoRo vessels, cancelling major routes to some of our more remote destinations such as the Caribbean and Central America and being slower to price more complex shipments.
In order to counteract these headwinds and continue to deliver increasing value for our shareholders and stakeholders alike, we’ve invested heavily this year in our systems, people and processes. This has been a major cash investment on our part and the results will come to fruition throughout 2025 with an improved international freight management portal, integrated website offerings and improved ways for our clients to interact with us digitally and to ensure comfort in transaction security.
2025 Outlook
As previously stated, we’ve got some good signs of growth in major markets globally and the next couple of years look good from an industry perspective. We are seeing more and more countries imposing engine emissions regulations on major projects, the most recent of this being Colombia in South America. This will lead to a price suppression on older machines with Tier 3A engines and a corresponding increase in demand for Tier 4F and upwards.
We expect that the market will become much tighter for operators wanting to purchase machines in their local region as the global logistics challenges continue to bite throughout the year. This will result in buyers having to cut their list of requirements and buy equipment that is good enough for now in their local region with a view to upgrading it later once shipping issues ease or incurring greater percentage shipping costs across the board. Imports and exports to and from the USA also up for conjecture until we see the extent of the proposed tariffs from the incoming administration after 20th January.
In summary, It's been a tough year for all, it’s not just our industry, I’m hearing the same thing from -peers in all industries from construction to consumables right through to healthcare and engineering
We’re going into our 50th year strong, we’ve got the best team we’ve ever had, we’ve got more customer facing initiatives under development than we’ve ever had and we remain committed to our core promise to all of our stakeholders - we commit to making it 100% safe for you to buy and sell geo and piling equipment across international borders by offering an unrivalled range of machinery in every category that we choose to operate in.
Here’s to a great 2025, let’s put everything we’ve got into it and maximise every opportunity that comes our way.
Yours Faithfully,
Kurt James
CEO
SigmaPlant Finder
