Review of 2006

The year 2006 was marked by the Buchen Group’s continuing expansion nationally and in-ternationally and the integration of then newly acquired subsidiaries.

Our internationalisation strategy accelerated significantly with the acquisition of Watco nv und Watco sa, two Belgian industrial cleaning services companies operating in the chemicals and petrochemicals industries as well as in the heavy industrial and steel industries. These two new subsidiaries, now renamed Buchen Industrial Services nv and Buchen Industrial Services sa, have since been integrated into the Buchen Group’s certification matrix (Safety Management in accordance with SCC** and Quality Management according to EN ISO 9001:2000).

The “Allgemeine Gleichbehandlungsgesetz”, the General Law on Equal Treatment, came into effect in Germany in August 2006. Discrimination and disadvantaging of any kind were al-ways expressly banned at Buchen. Additional and complimentary clauses relating to child or forced labour, discrimination and non-smoker protection have now been expressly laid down in our company policy and included in the Management Manual.

The Buchen Group’s Company Principles were reiterated and confirmed by the Board of Di-rectors in summer 2006. They have been published in a bilingual brochure (English/German) reflecting the increasing internationalisation of the Buchen Group.

The positive trend in our accident ratios continued in 2006. The SCC accident ratio (stan-dardized measure of accidents which lead to at least one lost working day per one million hours worked), the all important key ratio for international comparisons, fell from 9.5 to 9.1.

We would like to thank all participants for the continued commitment and we would also like to thank all of our customers for their cooperation.

March 2007

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