In yet another year influenced by the Coronavirus, we continue to focus on the safety of our employees and of our visitors by strictly following our protocols to minimise any possible impact.

I am very proud of everyone’s efforts in this regard at GWC Italia group and want to take this opportunity again to express my sincere gratitude to everyone around the world for maintaining those high standards of safety and awareness.

Despite the fact that we still face uncertainty in our industry, our focus remains on developping long-term relationships, delivering solid returns for our customers, and building our long-term future.

The past two years have been the biggest challenges in many of our careers, we believe that the impact of the Coronavirus will continue to be felt throughout 2022.

That impact has presented itself by creating unprecedented shipping problems right across the globe and continuous variations in costs and availability of raw materials. I take pride in the way we have overcome many supply chain challenges, switching manufacturing across our wholly owned plants in Italy, USA and China as necessary to overcome several of those difficult challenges and continue to meet our main objective to deliver product on time.

We face an uncompromising competitive environment with client terms that challenge us in all the markets we operate in; our pledge remains – to be easy to do business with and meeting our commitments, a value appreciated by our partners.

I am extremely proud of how we have been able to make vital alliances in the USA during the past twelve months, supporting them by maintaining high levels of Ball Valve inventory for the Midstream and Upstream business in the USA. I am truly encouraged by that entire extended family of new personnel, new representatives and distributors. We remain committed to supporting this market with all the energy and resources we have available.

I also want to thank all of our employees globally for their professionalism in managing the many challenges we faced in 2021 and in the advancement in technology and product development. Our new global range of LNG and Natural Gas Ball Valve products will serve us well as we see some signs of recovery with market activity in 2022.

I am particularly excited with the development in the fitness for purpose program of our Hydrogen and CO2 Ball Valve products, these will serve us well into the next 30 years.

We are firmly committed to our sustainability charter and our efforts with becoming more carbon neutral by way of some innovative programs we are entering into. Our sustainability program is available online, and we will update it as our results continue to improve.

We shall continue to identify new opportunities to grow our business sustainably and minimising our impact on the environment.

Paolo Palella – GWC Italia Group Chairman