The Festo Group suffered a 7.5 percent drop in turnover in the 2020 financial year due to the pandemic. Sales amounted to EUR 2.84 billion (previous year: EUR 3.07 billion). Overall, however, forward-looking cost-cutting measures and job security enabled the company to close 2020 with an operating result slightly above the previous year.

"We have thus guided our workforce safely through the crisis year and created a good basis for being ready for the global economy to pick up again. At the same time, it gives us the financial freedom to invest in our future now," said the Chairman of the Executive Board, Dipl.-Ing. Dr. h.c. Oliver Jung. As in the previous year, the company's R&D ratio was 8 percent of turnover.

In recent years, Festo has invested heavily not only in Europe, but also in the growth regions of North America and Asia. With its "In the region for the region" approach, the company has high-performance supply chains that continue to function reliably both globally and locally during the crisis.

The company expects 2021 to be a catch-up year. "We have made a good start to the year, with strong growth in the first quarter. Nevertheless, the end of the pandemic cannot yet be estimated. We are therefore continuing our austerity measures. At the same time, we are continuing to invest in our growth and innovation strategy," confirms Jung.

Strategy 2025+

The company is implementing its new Strategy 2025+. The focus is on growth and performance, innovation and future markets, digitalization and artificial intelligence (AI) as well as sustainability. Digitalization and AI determine the product roadmap with smart and intelligent products and are enablers for energy efficiency and sustainability in customer solutions.

Festo focuses on the qualification of employees in the digital transformation. "The structural change in many industries is clearly noticeable for us, from the electronics industry to electromobility and LifeTech. Electrification in the automotive industry is currently gaining massive momentum. We are seeing strong demand for automation solutions for the production of electric vehicles and vehicle electronics as well as battery production. In addition, there is a great need for qualification across the entire spectrum of electrification. This offers us great opportunities for growth in the coming years," explains Jung.

The need for home schooling and virtual training in education and training (digital education) is growing rapidly during the pandemic. During the lockdown, Festo Didactic launched its new digital learning platform, Festo LX, for technical education and provided a free homeschooling version for teaching technology in schools.

The LifeTech business field with medical technology and laboratory automation is experiencing a real boom with growth rates of over 100 percent. Festo is continuously expanding its Technical Engineering Center for LifeTech in Boston, which opened in 2018, in order to tap into this promising growth market. The company's products are also contributing to the fight against Covid-19, with laboratory automation in particular enabling high throughput in Covid-19 testing. Automation is also key in vaccine development and production. "Automation creates the conditions for us to be able to provide and treat people worldwide quickly, safely and affordably with high-quality medical care - be it with medicines and vaccines, respiratory masks or medical devices. We will therefore continue to expand LifeTech significantly over the next few years," says Dr. Oliver Jung.

Sustainability requires automation and education

"As a company and society, we have to manage the balancing act of finding ways out of the crisis and positioning ourselves sustainably for the future during the pandemic. Automation and technical education are key to this. We also have a great social responsibility for sustainable development," says Jung. The aim is to gradually develop production in the direction of a circular economy. "At Festo, we are convinced that pneumatics in particular offers massive advantages over electrics in many areas, and no other technology can match it. We are currently developing this further in the direction of smart and digital pneumatics. There is still a great deal of potential here," confirms Jung.

In 2020, Festo also made internal progress in climate protection and thus achieved its climate target of saving at least 30 percent_CO2 by 2025. Festo has the greatest leverage for climate protection with its customers through the right choice of pneumatic and electrical products. This is because around 90 percent of_{CO2 emissions} are generated during product operation and only around 10 percent during production. Smart products and services, digitalization and AI are giving new impetus to energy efficiency on the way to_CO2-neutral production.