Björn Rosengren and ABB believe in Northern Sweden!
– We intend to double the number of employees from 350 to 700, and the Sundsvall office, which I visited for a couple of days in connection with the Bünsow Business Growth Forum, will also grow by 20-30 percent.
ABB President and CEO Björn Rosengren has a special feeling for this part of Sweden. As early as the mid-1990s, he became manager of Nordhydraulic in Kramfors and he sees that northern Sweden has a number of trump cards in the new competition for the green transition.
It’s about the world’s greenest electricity grid, our natural resources, an “industrial DNA” and our ability to attract capital, skills and actors that contribute to development,” he says.
As the chief executive of a global company with 105 000 employees – 3 700 in Sweden – he still feels some concern that the globalization process is turning into a “de-globalization” with nationalist currents in India, China and the US.
The most important thing seems to have become producing for the national market, rather than the global one, he says. This has also led to ABB itself working more and more according to the “Local to local” concept and building up its operations close to the customer. Therefore, 95% of the products manufactured in ABB’s plants in China and Europe, for example, are sold in the country where production takes place.
Nevertheless, in his speech he repeatedly refers to the investments that ABB is making in our part of Sweden. Renewcell in Sundsvall – the world’s first commercial recycling plant for textiles – is an example where ABB provides most of the technology such as control systems and motors.
“ABB (initially ASEA) is celebrating 140 years this year and the development and green transition in northern Sweden will help us to live for at least another 140 years,” says Björn Rosengren.