Competition stimulates business

The well-known saying “Competition stimulates business,” according to the online lexicon WirtschaftsWiki, describes the fact that proximity to competition often does more good than harm. Several similar businesses geographically near each other will attract more buyers to this area because there is a wider choice. In most such cases, everybody profits and everyone has the chance to get a slice of the cake. In addition, more innovations in a market tend to stimulate demand such that the market expands.

So much for theory. All of you, dear readers, have already had your own experience, as have we ourselves, with your competitors – whether in the positive or in the negative sense. What we are now increasingly encountering is tougher competition among the various construction methods and, in that connection, of course, also involving the various construction materials. Keyword solid (concrete) construction versus lightweight (wood) construction.

We editors, it goes without saying, always strive to pay tribute to our beautiful construction material concrete and, most of all, to precast construction – also In the 89th year of publication of our BFT International. Nevertheless, nothing from our standpoint speaks against now and again taking a look “outside the box.” For this reason, it should not be problematic to report occasionally, for instance, on wood-concrete hybrid construction, as most recently about the manufacturer Brüninghoff, which outstandingly combines the benefits of both materials. In our next edition, BFT 05/2023, you are invited to read about the Dutch limestone plant Calduran, which was equipped by the Progress Group. This demonstrates impressively that its Ebos software system has become successfully established both in many precast plants as well as in other sectors. In this sense I wish you much enjoyment in reading this issue.