Frost & Sullivan Recognizes Castolin Eutectic for High Quality Services at Effective Prices in the European Repair and Maintenance Welding Consumables Market

LONDON, June 7, 2010 - The 2010 Frost & Sullivan European Repair and Maintenance Welding
Consumables Customer Service Leadership Award is presented to Castolin
Eutectic. With end users becoming more aware of their welding requirements
and also demanding a higher standard of service, Castolin Eutectic has raced
ahead of competitors by providing improved services and paying more attention
to critical issues like technical assistance, training courses,
subcontracting facilities, etc.

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The repair and maintenance welding consumables market has been one of the
least affected markets during recession, mainly because end users prefer
repair and maintenance to investing in asset replacement or newer
technologies. Demand for repair and maintenance welding consumables is mainly
from the heavy machinery user sectors, including power generating plants and
the oil and gas extraction industries. Furthermore, the increasing prices of
raw materials, competition from low-cost, low-quality Asian goods and the
availability of alternative processes such as mechanical fasteners and
adhesives offer challenges to the welding consumables market.

"Castolin Eutectic provides a wide array of alloy consumables,
specifically for repair and maintenance in numerous end-user industries like
heavy machinery, cement, automotive, power and offshore," says Frost &
Sullivan Research Analyst Archana Chauhan. "All these quality services are
selected to respond to the needs of the customers effectively, thereby
demonstrating Castolin Eutectic's experience and insight into the diverse
requirements of the customers."

The repair and maintenance welding industry needs an arsenal of diverse
alloyed consumables for different repair and maintenance applications for
which traditional welding products are not designed. Castolin Eutectic's
proprietary alloys have helped it maintain a very strong historical
relationship with the cement, oil & gas, waste and recycling, glass industry,
pulp and paper and other industries. For the end users to achieve highest
productivity gains through its special products, processes and services,
Castolin Eutectic believes in providing them with technical know-how and
training about how different alloy choices could best reduce their production
downtime.

The company's international team of experts conduct production site
surveys to identify "weak links" and thus can show clients the potential cost
savings to be made by using Castolin Eutectic's specialised alloyed
consumables. Its service processes are highly interdependent and hence, help
to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty because the overall service
experience is more effectively coordinated.

Significantly, while its competitors sell through distributors, who also
stock consumables of other companies, Castolin Eutectic alloys are primarily
sold direct through its own associated companies who can identify new repair
subcontract opportunities. Such services are also responsible to develop
application-specific procedures, processes and products to provide necessary
customer technical support.

In addition, since the company has its own operations in several regions
of Europe like the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Benelux,
Scandinavia, Switzerland, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic, Russia,
Ukraine and Turkey, it can provide a rapid response service to customers.

"Although the overhead expenses of maintaining service is higher than
distributor based supply chains, it is the company ethic to provide
sufficient technical support to all its customers personally, which is more
successful in the former case," says Chauhan. "The company has set
appropriate standards for the timeliness of response for all forms of
customer contact including phone calls, e-communications and grievance
redressal cells."

Castolin Eutectic's success lies in its innate focus on customer
satisfaction in its development and commercial activities. Besides studying
client needs and providing innovative solutions and services, the company
also monitors the outcome of its services. The company identifies individual
customer needs at the first point of contact by an appropriate technical
expert. When additional services appear to be likely, the company discusses
with the customer the next step and indicates the probable overall time
required to satisfy the needs successfully.

The Castolin Eutectic service organises workshops regularly, wherein the
dedicated team of technical experts with full access to its unrivalled
applications data base provides welding services to the end users. Its
customers can now also subcontract all the welding operations to the
CastoLab(R) Services teams in the absence of welders. In this way, the
customers can have their work done safely by qualified technicians and remain
satisfied, especially if insufficient welding skills or equipment exist
in-house.

Furthermore, detailed brochures and initial technical visits by its
technical experts are provided free of charge. Though the customers have to
pay for any ensuing subcontracting services, it is still very cost effective
compared with hiring welding experts at their plants to do the repair and
maintenance work. The combination of innovative, application specific
products and service with high value to customers make Castolin Eutectic the
worthy recipient of the 2010 European Frost & Sullivan Award for Customer
Service Leadership in the repair and maintenance welding consumables market.

Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to a company that has
demonstrated excellence in the timeliness of offering a novel service. The
award recognizes efforts towards innovation, quality and cost effectiveness
as well as the impact on customer satisfaction.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety
of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and
superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation,
customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts
compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth
interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify
best practices in the industry.

About Castolin Eutectic

With more than 2000 people worldwide, Castolin Eutectic is the leading
company in fighting wear and providing specialist coating, repair & joining
solutions in harsh operating conditions. We provide products with application
know-how to customers and are increasingly moving to becoming a service based
business. More than 100 years of experience in welding, brazing and thermal
spraying technologies stands for professional and innovative solutions.
Castolin Eutectic is your partner with industrial expertise in surface
protection, repair and joining solutions. To find out more about us, please
visit www.castolin.com or www.eutectic.com.

About Frost & Sullivan

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    Catherine Brassell
    Best Practices
    Frost & Sullivan
    Tel: +44-207-915-7867
    Email: catherine.brassell@frost.com

Catherine Brassell, Best Practices of Frost & Sullivan, +44-207-915-7867, catherine.brassell at frost.com