Distence is investing heavily in growth and internationalization. Today already a significant share of our sales comes from abroad and the pipeline and international interest in our services and solutions strongly support this investment. The machine building sector in Northern Europe as well as the supporting Industrial Services sector is going through a rapid and dynamic transition to Industrie 4.0 and the digitalization of industrial assets. We are systematically building our internationalization path. To finance this rapid expansion, we have also opened up a financing round.
In the beginning of 2018, Krister Hagström, a seasoned industry expert, started as the Business Development Manager for Sweden, also servicing the neighboring countries. We have also increase our overall marketing and visibility activities in these countries and the results have been extremely encouraging. Germany, having a long and successful track record in technology and OEM business, has shown extreme interest in our digitalization solutions and we are preparing to open up local operations there as well to support our growing customer base. Initial operations have also been kicked off in UK, but much more is to come to service that market.
According to our market analysis, all the above markets have strong OEM and Industrial Services (IS) sectors. These countries have a long tradition in both machine building and aftermarket services and a deep and wide base of industrial companies. Finland’s strong knowhow in telco and mobile technologies and our digitalization capabilities are a great match with these industrial players. Our focus at Distence is the digitalization of industrial assets in demanding environments and the transforming of sensed data into business supporting information from components such as industrial gears, pumps, motors and other rotating machines as well as various industrial processes. It is given that these businesses and verticals are global, not simply geographical; hence we are also building our operations to service these verticals globally.
Today we have delivered installations already through our customers to over 40 countries on five continents. We can with confidence say that our solution is both a global solution and scalable. We bring transparency to assets our customers manufacture and deliver to their customers globally and to those industrial services companies that service the installed base as a business. As the financial and operational excellence benefits to our customers are easily quantifiable and significant, we are sure there is a great growth path ahead. To speed up this growth, we have kicked off a growth financing round. If you are interested in being a part of this growth story, check out https://www.invesdor.com/fi/pitches/926