Market conditions in Austria for the Business Area’s main product - water turbines - improved considerably in 2004 over previous years.  There were several larger modernization, rebuild, and service projects as well as new investments.  Project activity was also on the rise in the mini-power sector, involving projects below 10 MW.

In China, investment and project activities remained at a high level.  There is a trend to increase the local portion of supplies for projects.  On a number of promising turbine projects, Andritz cooperates with Chinese manufacturers acting as the supplier of engineering and key components.