By Venkatachari Jagannathan
Chennai, May 28 (IANS): Spanish sanitaryware major Roca will be investing about Rs.50 crore in expansion while planning a greenfield project in 2024/2025 in India, said a top official of the Indian subsidiary Roca Bathroom Products Pvt Ltd.
He also said the company is exporting to markets like Australia and others previously served by Roca's plants in China.
"Our capex in 2021 will be Rs.50 crore to expand faucets and plastic products production capacities. We are also looking at acquisitions and greenfield expansion by 2024/2025," K.E. Ranganathan, Roca Bathroom, Managing Director told IANS.
According to him, Roca China's experience in handling the Covid-19 helped the Indian company in 2020 in safeguarding the workers.
"In China, Roca has eight factories. They had advised us on social distancing at factories, canteen and other places, disinfecting and others. We also told the workers and employees about the safety measures to be taken at home. This helped us to restart production at all our eight factories when the unlocking happened last year," Ranganathan said.
According to him, the company didn't stop production and continued to build inventory to take advantage of the demand that would come when the lockdown is eased.
Roca Bathroom also held back its price line though there were hikes in the prices of brass and plastics.
Roca in India is present in all the segments in the Indian sanitaryware market -- luxury (Armani Roca), premium (Roca, Johnson Suisse), mass premium (Parryware) and budget (Johnson Pedder).
Queried about the demand Ranganathan said it is good from the institutional segment as construction work was allowed even though there was a lockdown in many states.
"Builders were asking for products for small/medium/big projects. Thirty per cent of our revenue is from the builders'/institutional segment. In May there will be growth as sales are increasing. What got affected during the lockdown is the small plumbing works at the retail end which is a huge market," he said.
Roca Bathroom is targeting a turnover of about Rs.1,650 crore in 2021 as against 2019's figure of about Rs.1,500 crore.
"We would like to term 2020 as a missing page as the turnover was down by 20 per cent over previous year's figure," Ranganathan remarked.
On the exports front he said Roca Bathroom is exporting to markets like Australia and others previously served by Roca's plants in China. Today export revenue is about three-four per cent of the turnover. There is a good opportunity within the Roca group.
Speaking about the company's - chlorinated polyvinyl chloride (cPVC) pipes - sold under the Parryware brand he said the company is planning to enter the Eastern region in August and go national next year.