Kerakoll opens ninth factory

Jun 08, 2007

08/06/07 - In May this year Kerakoll opened a new factory for the production of pre-mixed products (adhesives, screeds, plaster, etc.) in Rubiera (province of Reggio Emilia, Italy).
The new facility involved an investment of 30 million euro and joins the other 8 owned by Kerakoll, a leading manufacturer of chemical products for building applications: 5 in Italy (two in Sassuolo, province of Modena, one in Brugine, province of Padua, one in S.Angelo, province of Padua, and one in Zimella, province of Verona) and 3 abroad (at Castellón in Spain, at Athens in Greece, and at Lodze in Poland).

The Rubiera factory is the most modern in Europe and boasts a high level of automation and production flexibility. This allows it to make numerous production changes, particularly for the Biocalce line of natural construction materials.
The new facility stands on a 43,000 sq.m site with 18,000 sq.m of buildings. It currently has 2 production lines which produce a range of about 60 pre-mixed products and a production capacity of 16,000 sq.m/day.
This will increase to 22,000 sq.m/day following the start-up of a third line planned for 2008.

The factory is an integral part of the business plan that the Kerakoll Group launched in 2005 and which establishes a target turnover of 500 million euro by 2010.

"Starting up a new production facility in Italy might appear to be a contrarian choice, particularly for a Group focused on internationalisation like ours" commented Gian Luca Sghedoni, managing director of Kerakoll Group."
But in fact our vision for development includes increasingly close links with Italy and the Sassuolo ceramic district in particular."
"We are obviously planning investments in production abroad" Mr Sghedoni continued. "However, the purpose of this is not to delocalise production and manpower but to offer commercially important countries the support of a continuous direct presence that is so crucial in our sector, particularly considering the high incidence of transport costs."

kerakoll.jpgKerakoll announces 2006 resultsKerakoll has announced its draft figures for its consolidated financial statements for 2006. At 285 million euro, total consolidated earnings saw strong growth, equating to a rise of 18.4% on the 2005 figure of 240.6 million euro, thus confirming the pattern of growth that has continued uninterrupted since 1990, when turnover stood at approximately 11 million euro.

Profits also rose substantially: EBITDA reached 81.2 million euro, as against 64.5 million in 2005 (up 25.9%), while EBIT rose to 69.3 million euro, up 26.7% on the previous year (54.7 million euro).
Growth was driven by the big success on the Italian market of Biocalce, the division dedicated to natural construction materials, as well as by a marked rise in turnover on foreign markets, which accounted for 35% of total Group turnover.

Growth on foreign markets also reflects the acceleration of the process of internationalisation, which has seen the opening of three new commercial subsidiaries – in Sweden, Portugal and Croatia – and excellent results generated by the Group’s associate companies in Spain (up 40%), Germany (up 27%) and the UK (up 33%).

The Kerakoll Group is made up of three brand divisions:

- Kerakoll,for contemporary architecture and building

- Biocalce, for bio-construction and historical restoration

- Kerakoll Design, for interior and decoration design.