The magazine of the Air Liquide Group

Efficient, simple, customized: a successful customer experience lies in these three words. It is a core objective of Air Liquide’s strategy, which relies on leveraging the power of digital to offer its customers and patients a first class experience.

As a result of the popularity of online orders for fresh or frozen products, urban deliveries are on the increase. Considered to be noisy and dirty, they have become a major issue for online sales and refrigerated transport companies, which also have to comply with increasingly strict environmental standards.

Thermo Fisher Scientific develops high-quality analytical and calibration equipment for applications in geochemistry, life sciences, food product traceability, sports doping, and also research on climate change. The leading analytical instrument manufacturer recently teamed up with Air Liquide to supply customers with stable isotope gases.

In 2016, Somie Kim took on a new role as Head of the Hydrogen Energy activity in South Korea. Her mission: "to change the face of the Korean automotive industry through the deployment of hydrogen stations." Since then, she has been working in partnership with Hyundai and represents Air Liquide in a public-private consortium dedicated to this matter.

T17 is the world's largest oxygen production unit, owned and operated by Air Liquide for Sasol in South Africa. As the Plant Manager, Bertus Swart was responsible for ensuring the startup of this state-of-the-art plant, with a total production capacity of 5,000 metric tons of oxygen per day. His secret? “Go beyond set goals, explore different approaches, be open to new ideas and support my team with a creative mind.”

In a rapidly changing world, detecting customers’ needs is key to anticipate products and services that will meet their challenges—whether they be to gain efficiency, improve the user experience or reduce the environmental impact of their activities.This is the reason why Air Liquide collaborates with more than 100 start-ups around the world, across all its businesses.

In 2018, Air Liquide signed a new contract with its long-standing strategic customer Covestro, a leading global supplier of high-tech polymer materials. The Group will produce hydrogen directly on Covestro’s site in Antwerp (Belgium) using its state of the art SMR-X™ technology. It will allow for hydrogen production while offering increased energy efficiency and a reduced carbon footprint. The unit will start operations in 2020.

In September 2018 in Hobro, Denmark, Air Liquide inaugurated HyBalance, a pilot site for the production of carbon-free hydrogen. This unit’s specificity is that it uses electrolysis technology which allows it to balance the electricity grid and store surplus electricity in the form of hydrogen that will be used in industry and transportation. This project was initiated in 2016 in a country that is pioneering the energy transition.

As an intrapreneur at the i-Lab and member of the "Act for Air" team, Carina Krastel applies a user-centric approach and start-up methodology to develop new air purification solutions for urban pollution hot spots.

Our customers are always looking for new solutions to improve their fabrication processes and the competitiveness of their offers. In this context, increasing the quality of welding or cutting represents a key asset, in particular for metal manufacturers. To address this challenge, Air Liquide has opened an Advanced Fabrication Center (AFC) at its Delaware Innovation Campus, in the U.S. — the world’s biggest metal manufacturing market.

In 2014, while he was conducting research on cardio pulmonary ventilation, Jean-Christophe Richard, a professor of resuscitation, joined Air Liquide Medical Systems (ALMS) as Medical Director with one foot still squarely planted in the world of research. This is where he developed CPV, an innovative automated ventilation system used in resuscitation during cardiac arrest.