Erpec News

GILbArCO vEEdEr-rOOT
18
Gilbarco Veeder-root, eMea & asia president, peter dilnot the GVr Flexpay B2B outdoor payment terminal a GVr SK700 – ii n fuel dispenser with a multi media Crind
“Everything we do is driven by technology”
The last time I visited Gilbarco in Basildon UK,
it was for a meeting with their much respected
Sales Director John Blake, back in 1990. I think
Gilbarco had just acquired the business of rival
pump manufacturer avery Hardoll and I wanted
to find out about any re-organisation which may
happen as a result. On my return last week, I
could not help noticing that the GVR European
HQ reception had a familiar feel to 20 years ago,
but with a much more modern twist . I mentioned
this to the receptionist on duty and she told me
that she had been working there for 14 years and
her Mother did the job before her. Comforting
as you get older, to know that some things, very
often regarded as incidental, can survive two
decades of change. avery Hardoll was in fact
the first of many acquisitions to be made by
Gilbarco in the coming years. John Blake sadly
died over 10 years ago.
In this industry, Gilbarco-Veeder Root is one of
the first companies instantly coming to mind,
when the subject of retail petroleum equipment
and technology is broached. Owned by
Danaher, listed on the New York Stock Exchange
and Headquartered in Greensboro USa, GVR
have an annual revenue figure which exceeds
US $ 1 billionv and employees 4 000 workers
in the process. There are 400 GVR distributors
around the world, supporting key customers at a
local level, being Multi National Oil Companies,
Supermarkets, HVR’s, Independent dealers
and Commercial refuelling outlets. In company
literature, Gilbarco Veeder-Root is defined as
being ‘a combination of companies in the petrol
forecourt industry’, a statement which becomes
clearer when looking at the individual companies
making up the GVR group.
It was in 1865 that Gilbert & Barker first established
the foundations of Gilbarco in Springfield
Massachusetts USa and by 1910 the company
had developed a TI push-pull petroleum pump,
which 66 years later led to their first electronic
gasoline pump in 1976. Veeder-Root, founded
in 1866 as the Root Company and subsequently
acquired by Danaher in 1986, developed their
first mechanical computer for Gasoline pumps
way back in the 1930’s. Red Jacket, another
primary company in the GVR Group, was first
established in 1878 and has been developing
pumps and leak detectors out of Davenport in
the United States for over 60 years.
More recent acquisitions for GVR have included
US companies Gasboy and alki in 2003. Gasboy
is a leading manufacturer and marketeer of commercial
electronic and mechanical petroleum
dispensing systems, fleet management systems
and transfer pumps and alki is a Seattle-based
technology developer and software-licensing
company. In 2004, leading forecourt controller
provider DOMS joined the group from Denmark,
followed by US software company Intermedia
Kiosks in 2007. Swedish forecourt automation
company autotank, which developed the world’s
first banknote payment terminal in 1974, came
into the group in 2008. last year the big acquisition
was Postec from New Zealand, a company
with a strong portfolio of hardware and software
for forecourt control, wet stock management,
outdoor payment and central reporting, which
brings with it, its installed base of almost 10 000
sites in Oceania, India, South East asia, Middle
East and africa.
Today as I write this article GVR have just finalised
two more acquisitions, the first being the Hamburg
based company Fafnir of Germany, which
offers a broad range of tank gauging and vapor
monitoring technology for fueling operators, as
well as sensing products for the process industry.
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by Nick Needs
The second company acquired is Mumbai based
larsen and Toubro, the Indian industrial conglomerate
which manufacturers, sells, integrates and
services petroleum dispensers, lPG equipment
and automation systems solutions, together with
its installed base which is composed of multinational
and regional companies, primarily in
India. Both extremely significant acquisitions in
their own right, but for the common goal, they fit
in perfectly with GVR’s technology led strategy,
which has been the main thrust behind every
company they have bought in the last 10 years.
My meeting partner for this visit, 20 years on
from the last time, was with EMEa and asia
President, Peter Dilnot, to ask him specifically
where the company focus actually is right now.
I wanted to know if getting bigger means it’s getting
harder for GVR to keep in touch with their
partners, distributers, installers and eventual end
users of their products and also ask what Peter
sees ahead in the future, that we might expect
to find on an everyday forecourt say in the next
20 years. I hoped it may also be possible for Peter
to tell me a little bit more about the emerging
markets of India and China where he has spent
a great deal of his time over the last few years.
Finally, as the acquisitions subject was topical, I
wanted to ask him about the l&T and Fafnir deals.
On meeting PD, who shall be referred to as
such in the following interview, I realized the
things we had in common were quite limited,
him having been an officer and helicopter pilot
in the British army and me, who sees driving a
tractor around our farm as something dangerous
and exciting, having never really enjoyed the
scouts. Strangely enough though, I discovered
early on in our chat that we had both worked as
cashiers at a petrol station in the twilight of our
youth, me in london and Peter in Wales. How