A new plant design platform from AVEVA Group in Cambridge UK should start shipping by the end of the year.

AVEVA software continues to dominate in oil & gas, power, marine and other industrial sectors despite the gloomy global backdrop and CEO Richard Longdon has high hopes for the new platform, which was outlined at the ACHEMA conference in Germany.

AVEVA says the “highly differentiated” solution represents one of the most significant R & D investments in AVEVA’s history. “It will be the most comprehensive and efficient plant design platform available,” the company added in its interim statement.

The company will provide more details on functionality and pricing around the time of the AVEVA World Summit in October.

AVEVA says it has seen no change in its demand environment from April 1 to date – but that represents good news despite a fall in the company’s share price in early trading.

It said that the Oil & Gas sector had remained particularly strong, driven by generally high levels of activity as well as the growing complexity and scale of projects worldwide.

In Power the market had continued to show steady growth and, as anticipated, demand in marine had remained subdued, but supported by offshore Oil & Gas projects in addition to naval shipbuilding.

In Engineering & Design Systems, demand from the engineering contractors was helping to drive continued growth, the company added.

AVEVA said that its Enterprise Solutions business continued to progress in line with plan, helped in part by the strength of the order backlog at the start of the current fiscal year.

One of the highlights of the period was a win secured at one of the new Brazilian shipyards to use AVEVA NET and AVEVA MARS. The company has also entered into a services partnership agreement with a global IT services firm that will help put in place the necessary additional service personnel to support AVEVA NET implementations on a truly global scale, AVEVA added.

Regionally, AVEVA reports continued strength in EMEA, while Latin America and North America continued to perform in line with plan. In Asia Pacific, the China business is fully operational and the other areas continue to perform well, says the company.

AVEVA said the integration of Bocad – completed in May – was progressing satisfactorily and the group continued to be cash generative with a strong balance sheet.