General presentation of Air Liquide

Air Liquide is a French company specialising in the production of industrial and medical gases. It is also one of the leaders in this sector internationally. However, its activities cover various fields, mainly industrial and medical gases such as oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen and synthesis gas, but also equipment and services for controlling fluid systems and managing gases and chemical liquids, which account for 95.7% of its turnover, as well as welding and cutting equipment and fine chemicals, which account for 2.3% of turnover, or diving products directly related to its major activity. The remaining 2% of the Group's sales are in engineering and construction of gas production plants and the manufacture of advanced technology products.
Air Liquide's market is majorly European but also involves the rest of the world. Thus, only 12.9% of its revenue is generated in France and 23.6% in the rest of Europe. It also generates 32.9% of its turnover in the United States, 21.7% in Asia-Pacific and 3.1% in Africa and the Middle East.
Air Liquide's customers are mainly industrialists and large industrialists. In the large industrial sector, it targets large-volume users of gas and energy solutions with customers in various sectors such as chemicals, petrochemicals, refining and metallurgy.
Gas and other energy deliveries are made through direct pipelines set up and managed directly by Air Liquide, which has a network of more than 7,000 km of such pipelines, the largest in the world.
But other smaller industries are also part of Air Liquide's customer portfolio, including craftsmen and SMEs. Of course, these are also companies that consume gas but in smaller quantities. These customers come from various sectors, such as the food industry, heat treatment of metals, glass production or the formatting of certain metal parts. Here, Air Liquide does not use a pipeline delivery network but delivers its products directly in special packaging to the customer's site. To do this, the group can count on a fleet of more than 10,000 tankers that criss-cross the world under the brand name Gaz Industriels Services.
Photo credits: Konushna, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons