Henkel to focus on emerging markets

German detergent and glue maker Henkel sees rapid growth in emerging markets which will offset the impact of slowing business in the euro zone in coming years, its chief executive said on Wednesday.Henkel, which makes laundry detergent Persil and Schwarzkopf hair products, generates about 40 per cent of its revenue currently from emerging countries like China or Brazil.To focus on fast-growing markets, Henkel hopes to increase the number employees based in emerging economies to 60 per cent by 2015 from 53 per cent now, Kasper Rorsted, Henkel’s chief executive told Reuters in an interview.“I think it is very severe what we are experiencing, in 2008 it was the debt crisis of the individual, in 2011 you have the debt crisis of the nation,” Rorsted said. “Of course it impacts the overall growth of our business; but relatively speaking, every year it will have a lesser impact because more and more of our business is in the emerging countries,” Rorsted said.The firm makes a bulk of its sales in Europe at the moment. In the second quarter, Henkel booked sales of 1.42 billion euros in Western Europe, slightly more than one third of its total quarterly sales of 3.95 billion euros. Henkel, which has around 4,000 employees in China, is bullish on the country’s prospects. The firm intends to break ground on what it says is the world’s largest adhesive manufacturing plant near Shanghai on Friday. The first phase of the plant will be opened at the end of 2012.“We see China as a very large domestic market that’s very interesting,” said Rorsted, adding that the products made at the new plant will be for Chinese consumption as well as exported to other Asian countries. From / Gulf Today