Annual Report 2014

Activity report
Cladding & building boards
Fibre cement outside of Europe
Outside Europe, Etex aims to expand its
fibre cement activities in Latin America,
Asia — focusing on China, Indonesia and
regional Asian exports — and Africa. In all of
these regions, people are gradually moving
to cities and towns.
This emerging urbanisation triggers
and accelerates the local demand for
sustainable building materials such as fibre
cement, a composite that thrives well in
numerous environments and climates.
Staying ahead of the game in
Latin America
Etex’s fibre cement products are in pole
position in Latin America. To reinforce this
even further, we sharpen our focus on two
axes in 2015.
An excellent reputation
On the one hand, flat sheets are used for
basic exterior wall applications to construct
affordable housing. After all, these products
offer both high impact resistance and
security.
On the other hand, thin sheets also make
up an important market in Peru, Colombia
and Chile for housing extensions. There,
they are used for interior and exterior
applications.
Long term approach
Cladding in Latin-America only represents a
minor part of our business. With more high
rises being built, it is a small but growing
business.
qqOur Eternit factory in Nigeria impresses
with a new series of moulded textured ceilings.
This photo features a small sample.
To increase our market share, we are
focussing our efforts on the specifying
business and design. We join forces with
architects, explaining our fibre cement
façade products assets. We will continue
this long-term approach revolving around
our top products, of which Equitone is our
number one calling card.
Extending our offer in
the African region
In Nigeria, we continued working on our
business transformation to stay ahead of
the strong competition. We invested in
three domains: innovation, distribution and
branding.
We developed a new series of hand
moulded textured ceiling products in our
Eternit Nigeria factory. After a testing
phase, production started in the latter half
of 2014. So far, the market’s response has
been positive, while the demand is growing
gradually.
In 2014 at our Nigerian plants we rolled
out a new autoclave process technology.
At its full capacity, the installation will be
producing several million square metres of
autoclaved fibre cement flat sheets.
In Southern Africa we want to further
expand our footprint from South-Africa to
the neighbouring countries. In the Magreb
and Middle East region, we continue to
grow our export business.
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