The resilience of our strong business model and diversity of revenue generation was demonstrated in the good results achieved in 2009, and our historic good growth characteristics are being reasserted as our markets recover in 2010. Our teams of direct sales and service engineers, which comprise 30% of our total employees, work closely with customers to identify process and steam system improvements that deliver energy savings, greater process efficiency, better product quality and regulatory compliance. Of even greater importance today, is our ability to assist our customers in responding to the impact of the relatively high cost of energy and increasing regulatory pressures to improve environmental sustainability.
Global economic activity and industrial production output have been recovering this year from the recessionary levels in 2009, although recent indicators suggest a slowing of growth in industrial output from the relatively rapid pace of earlier months. However, the broad recovery remains patchy across most of our markets. We have seen the strongest market conditions in Asia and in Latin America. Our business in North America began recovering in the second half of last year, driven by the USA, but growth has slowed in the past quarter. The economic recovery in Europe appears fragile and mixed, although we have seen some improvement across Europe in the most recent quarter.
In our steam specialties business, we have seen good demand for our core traditional products, reflecting a rebound in maintenance spending by customers and an increase in smaller, locally-budgeted process improvement projects. Watson-Marlow pumps have seen general improvements in nearly all market areas and across the product range, especially in tubing which is now being supplied from our new extrusion plant in Falmouth, England that was opened at the end of last year.
The consolidation of manufacturing in Cheltenham, England from three sites down to one has been progressing well. We anticipate completing the relocation of most of our assembly and testing operations by year end, with the balance of the main machinery moves finalised in early 2011. The restructuring of our French manufacturing plant will also be completed in early 2011. In June, we opened our new facility in Shanghai, relocating existing sales, production and warehousing and preparing the way for the planned expansion of production in China. We have therefore made good progress implementing our global manufacturing strategy, which is expected to yield cost savings commencing in 2011 and building to full savings of about £4 million per annum in 2012.
