A hearty welcome to all the readers of Specialty Gas Report
from the ‘other side of the pond’. We (the gasworld
team) all look forward to working with you and providing you with interesting news and articles on the specialty and
medical gases business over the coming years.
I want to take this opportunity of thanking Mike, Peter and
Hank (plus the rest of the back-room team) for developing and maintaining a
leading journal for the specialty gases business over the past 10 years and
look forward to working with them for the next 10 years!
In their Editorial, Peter and Hank have mentioned the
background to the merger and some of our intentions but I would like to share with
you what gasworld really stands for
and how as readers of this magazine, you will benefit moving forward.
Firstly, the idea of gasworld
was conceived from the growing number of questions I was being asked in my
normal consulting ‘day job’.
Questions such as “where can I buy aluminium cylinders?”,
“where can I get Helium from?”, “what valve should I use on my high pressure cylinder?”
and, “what is the size of the global market for carbon dioxide?”
I realized that our industry was very opaque and that we
needed a facility to address this and make our business more transparent.
However, with the growing dominance of the internet, people expected the answers
for free or at a low cost – contrary to the business proposition of consulting!
So the idea of having this facility developed into reality
when we began working on an internet portal site 5 years ago, to provide
greater global news coverage of our industry, provide a global directory for
our industry and provide other services as we grew. What I did not anticipate was
how traditional our industry was and that embracing the internet was not as
rapid as one expected – so we were dragged from cyber space back into the
traditional paper publication world.
I am pleased to say that we now cover much of the globe with
our magazine and internet coverage.
So why the interest in
Specialty Gas Report and what has the future in store for the merged business?
My first answer to this question has been partly referred to
by Hank and Peter – there is growing interest in specialty gases from the traditional
industrial gases sector. You only have to look at the changes over the past
5-10 years to see that gas companies and distributors have moved into this
space, as the need for more complex mixtures and types of gases grows rapidly
in developed and developing countries.
Some companies such as Airgas have mainly bought their way
into this business and others have developed their way into niche positions –
be it high purity gases, complex mixtures, isotope gases, refrigerants &
blowing agents, environmental calibration gases and more recently, specific
medical gases.
We felt that what Specialty Gas Report was doing for North America was very relevant for the global audience.
On the other hand, we feel that it is important that North American readers get
a chance to read more about what is being developed globally as it may have
some relevance to both producers, suppliers and users of specialty and medical
gases in the world’s largest gases market (all part of providing greater transparency
to our industry).
The importance for us is that Specialty Gas Report maintains
its specific focus and separate identity.
The above is very much about increasing the knowledge base
in our industry and this is what both Specialty Gas Report and gasworld jointly stand for. A new dawn,
a fresh look, greater knowledge and wider coverage will all feature in this and
future editions. They say that Americans and the Brits are divided by a common
language so please excuse the creep of British English in parts.
Secondly, we still want to keep the North American ‘flavor’
but introduce some international dishes to the menu. As a good friend of mine often
says – “John, the US
is going metric – inch by inch” – so we hope the changes in content will be
interesting but not too dramatic for the existing readers!
We hope you like it,
feel free to comment.
