Interview

Frederic Le Pape, American General Manager of FPS in Pennsylvania, talks about the current American market situation, what FPS expects from the future and the company’s news.

February 9, 2021
  • How was 2020 for FPS America?

Well definitely the pandemic was a bit of a shock to everybody. At the beginning I would say that everything slowed down, some things froze. And, after a few months, there was two different situations: all the projects that were for sterile and that were Covid related got a really a big push. While some others especially new installations / extensions got slowed down. And for us, in terms of installation, we managed to install everything we had to and we worked pretty closely with the customers. There was a lot of flexibility on both sides to make sure that, what was delivered, was installed and could be commissioned.

  • How do you see 2021?

Obviously, it’s going to be very different. I think the shock of the pandemic is over, the vaccines are coming and people know that things are going back to normal. The question is: how quickly? But there’s definitely a sense of optimism and people are more confident. They try to gauge when do they reengage in big projects, like extensions or brand-new installations. So that could be maybe the second half of the year, but already we see projects that have been, a bit slowed down, get the green light to go ahead. So we expect to be a stronger year than last year, and we’ll see how fast things move.