Swiss chemicals and construction materials giant Sika Group yesterday
launched its new China headquarters and seventh manufacturing center in the
country in Suzhou.
The company plowed $48 million into the new
facilities, bringing its total investment in China to $100 million.
It is
the company's third new facility to be opened in the past five years after a
second plant in Guangzhou and an admixture plant in Dalian.
China is the
world's biggest consumer of cement and a significant construction market, said
Walter Gruebler, chairman of Sika Group's board of directors.
"Sika is
very determined to undertake everything to gain a leading position in the
promising and fast-growing Chinese market in the near future," said Gruebler, at
the opening ceremony.
The company has maintained 30 to 50 percent annual
growth globally in the past few years, and its China business has been growing
even faster than the international average, said Sika CEO Ernst
Baertschi.
He said China's demand for high-end and quality products has
progressed rapidly in recent years, and that the industry is applying Western
standards.
Baertschi predicted Sika's revenue in China would be tripled
by 2010, and that the country would become Sika's No10 market in the world in
the next three to five years. But he declined to reveal the current
figures.
Sika focuses on sealing, bonding, damping, reinforcing and
protecting bearing load structures in the construction and transportation
sectors.
In China, it focuses on large-scale and key projects such as the
construction of factory buildings, bridges, undergrounds, airports and
high-speed railways, the CEO told China Daily.
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