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RELATED ARTICLES: Precast makes up 30% of UAE concrete market | ASEC wins cement-plant contracts in Egypt | Fujairah Cement sees second quarter $1.63m loss
Companies supplying concrete and the specialist materials used in its production have seen numerous shifts in the Gulf market in the last year. Added innovations in both manufacturing methods and from the manufacturers of related chemical products has increased the options for contractors to be able to build faster, bigger, and better.
Supplier success this year largely echoes the different levels of construction in an uneven Gulf region. ACICO Industries Company, one of Kuwait’s largest suppliers, has summed up the dearth of new projects in its home market with a 67% fall in net profits for the first half of the year.
Though profits have risen since the fourth quarter 2010 net loss, the company saw big losses linked to its foreign exchange as the company looks to sell into regional markets.
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In the UAE, Fujairah Building Industries has also been hit hard, taking an $1.4m loss to reverse the $5.07m profit for the same six months last year as its share price plunged and has been static since May.
This does not tell the whole story for the UAE market, of course, despite fewer projects overall in Dubai: United Precast Company has been busy erecting a number of towers in the Business Bay area for Arabian Construction Company and Al Futtaim Carillion.
Xtramix Concrete Solutions has also seen strong profits, partly from the growing acceptance in the market for precast concrete. Its subsidiary Xtramix International Precast helped overall turnover reach $217.79m last year, according to MD Abdel Dajani, thanks to a few mega contracts such as supplying 2,080 of the 5,000 villas at Falah in Abu Dhabi.
Bob Campbell, commercial manager, added that the market this year had been “changeable” – more steady than booming due to the nature of precast. “You do not, with precast, do one-off ‘hits’; it is more like on a 12- or 15-month schedule. It is not like concrete where you can scale up for when, for example, you need to produce 1,000t, and each truck has a 100t capacity, meaning that you will need 10 trucks,” he explained.
He added that the company has, in the last year, widened its net for procuring raw materials in response to the requirements of Abu Dhabi’s Estidama Pearl rating system. This includes a geographical range that includes some materials from Jordan.
The company is considering other GCC markets in addition to its home in the UAE capital, he said, with Saudi Arabia a possibility for further growth. The market is about half-and-half precast and on-site, Campbell estimates, though he added that it depended on the type of project.
The high level of construction activity in Saudi Arabia has been a magnet to international suppliers. It is now a year since Lafarge, the French concrete giant, bought a facility in the Kingdom to add to its acquisition of Orascom Cement in Egypt in 2007.
Today, the company is considering establishing a laboratory in the region in order to develop specific mixtures that can withstand high temperatures.
“You cannot just develop a product in Germany and then hope it will work in the GCC,” says Terry Mason, company manager, Readymix Gulf at Lafarge Emirates. “We have been thinking about setting up a laboratory in the Middle East specifically for products for the region. It would be a big commitment from Lafarge, though nothing has been finalised yet.”
Manufacturers of chemical products used in the formation of concrete – namely additives – have also been adding dimensions to the market with new techniques. Laticrete RAK is one example.
The company recently entered into a joint venture with the US firm Supercap, a company supplying a system that uses patented pump trucks to blend the mixture on-site and apply it immediately for slab formation, directly from hose to the floor on a large surface, for example.
“The system has the entire mixing part on the vehicle,” explained Sujit Singh, general manager. “So you add the sand and cement that you get from the job site, whereafter you add the additives and it can be mixed there and then, and it is poured from below to make the slabs, and the concrete is self-levelling.
“This saves time in comparison to mixing the client’s sand and cement in our factory and then transporting it to the site.”
Conmix has also been adding to its product line, including the establishment of a whole new division. In July the 36-year-old joint venture between the Bukhatir Group and German-Gulf Enterprises launched water-treatment additives and oilfield additives.
Besides a standard range of products supplied, the division also aims at providing materials for problems encountered in water treatment and oilfield drilling activities.
The company has also launched a piling service targeted at Saudi Arabia, building on its success distributing pre-mix plasters and construction chemicals in the Kingdom.
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