Plaster market up 5%

The plaster market in Romania will go up by 5% this year to approximately 6 million euros, Constantin Hariton, general manager of Rigips Romania, the local branch of construction supplies group BPB (UK) estimates. “The growth of the plaster of Paris market is parallel and follows the growth pace of the economy and constructions market. I think the plaster market will increase about 5% this year,” Hariton says. Plaster is the raw material used to make plasterboard, a widely used product on the domestic constructions market over the last few years. Rigips Romania is an integrated company on the domestic construction supplies market, following last year’s merger of BPB’s Romanian drywall and plaster operations into a single entity. The local BPB branch accounts for some 70% of the total plaster market and is the main player on the plasterboard market (40%) according to its own estimates. Its top competitors on the plaster market are Lafarge Romcim, Knauf or Henkel, with the first two also high-profiled on the plasterboard market. The plaster market in Romania amounted to 80,000 tonnes in 2002, according to the estimates of the British company representatives, compared with 77,500 tonnes in 2001. ZF