:: Edito ::

To our customers and partners
- on behalf of the HFS team
in France and Tunisia -
I wish you a very happy new year for 2008.

:: HF Sécurité ::
opens a commercial
office in China

HF Sécurité opened its commercial office in Beijing at the beginning of December 2007.  This is a new and very important stage in our export development, with the Asian market now in our sights.

May 2008 be full of optimism and hope.  May it bring each of us, and our nearest and dearest, health, happiness and joie de vivre in a peaceful and tolerant world.  Let’s take good care of our environment to protect our cherished planet.

It’s a new year in which HFS will celebrate its fifteenth birthday in May.  We will write another important page in our company’s history with a series of significant events.

> NOGAPI – A new interlocking concept

Our new range of safety interlocking products (codenamed NOGAPI) will be launched on 1st April.

This new range combines the latest technology with new levels of reliability.  It will retain well established safety features plus the benefits of the latest technical advances. 

> CHINA

Continuing our substantial export growth, 2008 will be the year for HFS to move closer to China where our safety interlocking systems are increasingly used to guarantee personal safety, particularly in electrical-switchgear applications.  Our products are becoming ever more popular in China and we are with you, our partners, as you carry out the major development projects that this huge country is undertaking.
HFS Beijing: our new Beijing commercial office was established in January with the arrival of Phily Xu, the new HFS China Sales Representative (see attached article).

Dear customers and partners, may 2008 allow us to continue our close collaboration so that we can achieve great projects throughout the world, improving people’s quality of life while guaranteeing their complete protection.
That’s our dearest wish!

Gérard DENIS
Managing Director

This decision follows an increase in HF Sécurité’s strength in China over the last few years, primarily with our main partners, the principal European manufacturers of MT machinery for implementing large projects.  We have also been working directly with Chinese engineering companies and their subcontractors who are responsible for completing these projects.

As a result HF Sécurité can design, manufacture and provide safety interlocking systems – within the framework of the huge Chinese nuclear programme currently in progress – maintaining and coordinating the supply to our European partners but also to the Chinese companies involved in these projects.

To address this rapid growth, HF Sécurité decided to open its own office in China, in Beijing, within the Asian structure of the Halma Group that has already existed in Beijing and Shanghai for several years.

The HF Sécurité team will continue to provide technical and commercial assistance on the ground in China for all of these large projects.  We will draw on all of our experience and professionalism to support the work carried out by Miss Philly Xu, to whom we wish great success in her new role.

Alstom Hydro has just signed four contracts in China, worth approximately 200 million euros, to provide hydroelectric power generation machinery.  HF Sécurité will supply Alstom with safety interlocking systems to safeguard the operators.

These contracts relate to:

Tianjin Alstom Hydro Equipment, the Chinese arm of Alstom Hydro, is responsible for managing these projects as well as for the design, engineering, manufacture and commissioning.

:: This quarter's most important projects ::

Substation in Angola

Bemposta dam in Rio Douro, Portugal

Shangaï Aeroacoustic Wind Tunnel