ANNUAL REPORT 2013 The Poul Due Jensen Foundation The Poul Due Jensen Foundation owns 88 per cent of the Grundfos Group. The Foundation was established back in 1975 by the founder of Grundfos, Poul Due Jensen, with the aim of ensuring a financially sound and sustainable development of Grundfos and its affiliated companies. A commercial foundation is a unique model for ownership of companies that have secured growth and employment for many trendsetting companies in Denmark, including Grundfos. In addition to practising responsible ownership, the Foundation supports various nonprofit purposes. In 2013, the Board of the Foundation decided to strengthen its visibility and activity level by establishing a website, host events and offer awards and scholarships. The Board of the Foundation has also decided to establish a foundation secretariat to be presided over by an Executive Director. The person chosen is Christian Hartvig, who for the past 11 years has held a position in Grundfos as General Counsel of the legal department. initiated in East Africa and Southeast Asia. The development projects helped develop new methods of solving everyday problems for some of the poorest people in the world. With the aim of providing safe drinking water and water for food production, a number of derived challenges emerge, such as health, hygiene, learning, business development, etc., so even though clean water is the starting point, the development chain includes several of the Foundation’s other four main premises – particularly a flair for innovation. Research recognised At the other end of the development chain is our natural science research – a field of donation that has accompanied the Foundation since the early years. The road may be long, but there is logic and continuity between the elite research projects valued by the Foundation and the tasks that Grundfos technologies help solve in the poorest parts of the world. The 2013 Grundfos Prize of 1 million Danish kroner was awarded to Professor, Dr. Scient. Niels Peter Revsbech of the Department of Bioscience at Aarhus University. While 250,000 Danish kroner of the Grundfos Prize is awarded as a personal acknowledgement, 750,000 Danish kroner is earmarked specifically for research. Niels Peter Revsbech plans to invest that money in laboratory equipment and to buy time to concentrate on developing new and potentially important sensor techniques. Beneficial donations In a wide range of situations, the Foundation’s donations are very beneficial to the recipients and their causes. The Foundation supports persons, groups and initiatives within four areas: 1) the fields of research (natural science), 2) design and innovation, 3) sustainability and the environment and 4) humanitarian aid. The Board of The Poul Due Jensen Foundation decided to increase the amount for 2013 to 15 million Danish kroner. vation. In 2013, the number of nominees for the Innovation Award was so high that the Foundation decided to award both a winner and two runner-ups. The Innovation Award went to Poul Johannes Henning, Pekka Mäntylä and Flemming Lykholt-Ustrup for their work in developing the new S-tube impeller for a new wastewater pump. The pump is characterised by a unique combination of an anti-clogging feature, high performance and low vibration level. Two additional projects were recognised as runner-ups: The Filter Cake project is a potentially revolutionary and energy-saving technology. The employees behind the project are Dominik Marek Dominiak, Tom Jæger and Søren Vigsø. The other project is taking place in Vietnam, where a sales employee is in the field in order to understand the challenges related to the Mekong delta water supply. A local solution has been developed to continuously supply drinking water despite an unstable power supply. The employees behind the project are Le Tanh Hai and Gert Borrits. Scholarships for diversity and education The two scholarships were awarded to Lucy Hughes of Italy and Marko Obrknezev of Serbia. Lucy Hughes has been involved in establishing a work group with the aim of identifying concrete initiatives to support diversity in the entire region. Lucy Hughes is passionate about how women can achieve success professionally. Marko Obrknezev is a Logistics Engineer in Grundfos Serbia. He used his scholarship to finance the remainder of his MBA. Innovation award for clever ideas In 2013, the Board of the Foundation introduced two additional prizes, which are available for Grundfos employees only: Poul Due Jensen’s Innovation Award and Poul Due Jensen’s Scholarship. The Poul Due Jensen Foundation wishes to acknowledge and support research, education and inno- Development projects The distribution of the amount across the four supported fields clearly favours Grundfos’ core competence – water technology – and by collaborating with various NGOs, a number of development projects were Visiting projects in East Africa The importance of the support for the many development projects in East Africa was emphasised when several of the projects
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