Steady as she goes

摘要

When hardly a day goes by without the media doom-and-gloom mongers talking down the economy, it's heartening to report that the fire protection industry is, for the moment, in reasonably good shape. Now I'm not talking about any sort of boom time with double-digit growth (though if that were the case you could bet your bottom dollar that the bubble would burst sooner or later). But there are continuing signs of solid growth. IMS Research, for example, says the worldwide market for active protection systems is set to grow at an annual compound rate of around 5% until 2011. Not surprisingly, growth is being spearheaded in China and the Middle East but even the UK shows creditable growth of 4.6%.