Striving for market muscle

Giam Piero Alessandrini of Cladtech.

Cladtech president Giam Piero Alessandrini discusses his company’s recent entry into the curtain-wall and glass market and its intention to claim a big chunk of the market share.

Cladtech president Giam Piero Alessandrini discusses his company’s recent entry into the curtain-wall and glass market and its intention to claim a big chunk of the market share.

What products and services does Cladtech provide?
We can split it into three main areas. The first is production of aluminum products, which includes existing curtain-wall systems, customised curtainwall design, doors, cladding and roofs. Then there is glass processing; we don’t produce the glass itself but customise it anyway you want, in terms of cutting, glazing, tempering and laminating.

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Finally, there is our powder-coating and anodising (a coating to reduce corrosion) facilities. In terms of services, the company is able to give a full service to any client that wants to construct a building.
 

Basically we have teams in design, production, project management, installation; we do the complete project right from the beginning until the end of the building.

Can you tell us about your new factory in the UAE?
The factory has been up and running in Ras Al Kahimah since the end of 2008. The whole factory covers 90,000m² and this is divided into three areas for each of our products. At full swing, doing two shifts you can have 60,0000m² of façade produced per year, which is a lot. The total cost was US $109 million (AED400 million).

All the machinery and technology in this factory is European, which is quite different from what you see in the GCC. Our high end technology allows us to use less people and this is an advantage when it comes to glass, and that means we have a consistently better quality product than what you can see in the current market.

Is this your advantage over the competitors?
Yes, but we also have a team of people that all have at least 15 to 20 years experience in the industry and are well known in the market. These people have come from the best companies in the world and the industry. I, myself, came from being CEO of Permasteelisa based in Italy, which is the biggest façade and window company in the world.
 

So the idea is to create a very strong organisational structure in terms of quality of people.

Do you feel you got the timing of coming into the market right?
We have been entering tenders seriously since October and we are already above $408 million in terms of tendering activities, so we entered the market quite heavily in that respect. Then of course now we are trying to tender projects that are moving ahead and trying to avoid situations where we know they are stalled because of the crisis.

So I think we are more or less competing well with our competitors in the market and have been accepted. The problem is the market itself and how it develops.

Are you having a positive impact on the market?
Yes, we are certainly starting to appear in the market. Even before we started, people understood the potential of this company in terms of its size and the professional experience of our staff. The market is well aware now of Cladtech.

It is clearly  tough at the moment and before the financial crisis it would have been much easier to grow much faster in the different countries, but never-the-less we are having an impact. We started activities in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, tendering in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

These are the four markets we have targeted in the last six months. I have also been in touch with some of my industry contacts in Germany, Russia and Italy with the intention of going international.

Due to the high capacity of this factory we certainly want to go international and we know that we have an advantage in certain countries because of the volumes we can handle and the low price. We have started some work in Africa and the next step will be into the European market.

Sounds like it’s a very aggressive strategy you have?
We do have an aggressive approach because we started with a big investment and the facilities and now we can start running. We are trying to move fast and hopefully we will be successful.

Who owns the company?
The company is owned by the Al Rajhi Company which is the biggest (in terms of capitalisation) bank in Saudi Arabia and the family is one of the most important families in the Kingdom. They have created a company called Al Rajhi Investments and this is diversified into different sectors, one of which is called Inshaa and handles building materials, under that there are a series of companies, one of which is Cladtech.

What kind of market share do you have now and what would you like it to be in the future?
At this stage it doesn’t make sense to talk about our market share because we just started. In this field there are many companies but I would like to be in the top three or four within the next 12 to 18 months. That would mean around 10% to 15% of the market share in the GCC. This is subject to the market and the financial crisis of course.