Climate and manufacturing technology group Walter Meier increased net sales ijn the first half of the year against the same period in the previous year by 9.3 per cent to CHF 346.9 million (£228m).
Excluding exchange and consolidation effects, this equates to organic net sales growth of 1.0 per cent.

While the internationally oriented Group divisions - Humidification & Evaporative Cooling and Tools - reported increased net sales compared with the first half of 2011, the retail and service operations in the Group divisions Climate and Machining Solutions, which are mainly focused on Switzerland, suffered a drop in net sales.

Humidification & Evaporative Cooling enjoyed above average growth, boosted by several acquisitions (most notably Port-A-Cool in the USA). Excluding exchange and consolidation effects, however, the Group Division posted a decline in net sales.

As in the previous year - with the acquisitions of JS Humidifiers (UK), ML System (DK) and Anderberg Fugtstyring (DK) - Humidification & Evaporative Cooling also saw major changes in the first half of 2012.

Overall, the various acquisitions helped the Group Division to improve its net sales significantly as against the previous year (CHF +30.1 million, or 60.1 per cent). Excluding exchange and consolidation effects, global net sales of humidification equipment and systems saw an organic decline after the first half of the year of 7.5 per cent compared with the same period in the previous year.

Walter Meier said: 'This fall can be attributed chiefly to the negative exchange effects in the Swiss export business (transaction effects) and to weak demand caused by the widespread recession in Europe.'

Net sales in the Climate division fell 8.6 per cent compared with the previous year, said to be the consequence of the weak Euro and, in particular, of consolidation effects (transfer of the radiant cooling business line to MWH Barcol-Air and sale of the UK air conditioning system retail business).