Since 2016, Robin Lindahl has been scaling up Normet, a leading mining and tunneling technology company as a President and CEO. Robin joined Normet with the target to get the company back on profitable growth track. During his tenure, the business has grown from 190 M€ to 315 M€ and the profit level has increased three folds. Significantly, Robin and his team reduced the Fixed cost from 30% to 23% of Net Sales and Networking Capital (NWC) from 33% to roughly 26%. Over the last two years, Robin has built a strong management team to ensure a clear direction towards the goal of doubling the company turnover and expanding its worldwide presence by the end of 2022. Presently, the highly experienced CEO and his team are striving to look for opportunities and strengthen their portfolio.
The Journey of Directing Leading Companies to Stay Ahead of the Game
Initially, Robin worked for 5 years in investment banking. By contrast, Robin wanted to move to the technology arena and therefore, joined Nokia in 1993. At Nokia, Robin worked with many experienced leaders and colleagues for huge 18 years. He primarily worked in leadership roles like Finance, Business Operations, and Sales. He remembers his best moments while he was in Sales leadership roles both on Nokia Networks and Nokia Mobile Phones. Those were the days when Robin and his team at Nokia Networks won large network deals with leading operators like T-Mobile, China Mobile and ATT. Later his glorious years at Nokia, Robin joined Outotec as Executive Vice President and excelled as the President of Metals, Energy & Water Business Area.
After the job change, Robin realized that shifting from one industry to another is not so difficult due to similarities of business and leadership. While working with talented metallurgists and Ph.D. holders at Outotec, Robin gained extra knowledge and experience of material science. Further,with his extensive experience, Robin joined Normet as a President and CEO in 2016. Currently, at Normet, there are over 1200 business professionals with a passion for doing “big” things for the company and for the industries which it serves. Normet operates globally with over 40 locations in 28 countries worldwide.
Offering Complete Range of Mining and Tunneling Solutions
With the growth in population and urbanization, the Mining, Tunneling, and Underground construction industry is increasing rapidly. However, a mining or tunneling company should take care of some important aspects like safety, sustainability, productivity, and profitability.
Robin and management team considers these aspects as their major growth drivers and utilize technology toprovide safe, sustainable and productive Mining and Tunneling customer solutions. Normet covers solutions for underground construction ranging from machines, construction chemicals,ground control,to holistic customer services. Both in tunnels and mines sprayed concrete is essential to build the support and rigidity of the underground tunnel. The sprayed concrete can be complemented with safe rock support systems and construction chemicals. In the area of sprayed concrete technologies and explosives charging, Robin and his team are proud of their solution expertise and capability to do continuous innovation to make the process safer and more productive.Normet not only offers a complete range of equipment and a full range of services but also process expertise in charging and sprayed concrete. Moreover, the company offers a large range of logistics vehicles for underground operations.
Assisting Customers with Complete On-site Support and Hands-on Approach
Robin and his team of Normet use their expertise for customer-specific process optimization to offerbest life-time value for its machines and services for customers. Additionally, such offerings improve clients’ operations in terms of safety and efficiency. The team of Normet spends time with customers to know their exact requirements. Likewise, Normet’s expert team assists their clients with their advice in design and construction phases from ground treatment approaches, to modern tunnel linings. This helps in the extension of the safety and service life of structures. The global presence in 28 countries with over 40 offices complemented with strong global technical support means that customer support is well available and most of the customer challenges have been seen somewhere in the world. They work as a supplement to the existing working team of Normet. These personal utilize their extensive expertise in the field when the current team needs extra support.
Utilizing Sustainable Energy for Sustainable Operations
Utilizing Sustainable Energy for Sustainable Operations Mining and tunneling operations are large consumers of energy and emit CO2 significantly. There is a great need for environmentally sustainable practices which promote the use of clean energy and reduce pollution. In that case, Robin and his team at Normet have developed a wide range of clean technologies through emission and particle control. They will also launch electric battery-driven machines this year. Likewise, they are focusing on improving the efficiency of their solutions through automation and robotics. Automation and robotics can improve safety significantly, taking human away from the zone of danger.
Further to continually develop its existing solutions, Robin’s team works closely with customers to gain insights about current needs. Accordingly, Robin and his R&D team generate new ideas and develop new products. Robin believes that customers are the inseparable part of a product development that helps in creating safe, easy to operate, and productive equipment. To establish a new product development (NPD) project, the development process starts with idea creation, filtering, and collecting good ideas. Then the NPD project follows a systematic Stage-Gate process which includes feasibility study, implementation evaluation, modeling and design, prototyping, testing, customer approval, and final launch.
“Businesses must be better at understanding their customer needs…,” says Robin
“Businesses must be better at understanding their customer needs…,” says RobinWhen asked about challenges for today’s businesses, Robin explained the severity in the business environment. He stated that the competition is fierce and businesses must not only focus on present customer needs but also anticipate the future demands. Further, Robin added, we are moving towards manless automated operations underground, self-driving, automated spraying and charging. With such advancements in technology, businesses need to continuously innovate to bring efficiency improvements, safety improvements, and new levels of automation to meet customer requirements.
