SCG plans showrooms to boost sales of building materials

Sattawat Thitaram, director of Building Materials Business in Vietnam, shows a token environmentally friendly process of producing building materials at SCG Experience Center in Bangkok early this week - Photo: Van Nam BANGKOK – Thailand-based SCG Group will open more showrooms in Vietnam in an effort to bolster sales of its construction materials and products, including tiles and sanitary wares, an executive said. Sattawat Thitaram, director of Building Materials Business in Vietnam, told the Daily in Thailand on Tuesday that the group would open one showroom in Hanoi in December and another one in HCMC in the middle of next year. The aim, he said, is to expand its sales network for such products as COTTO tiles, COTTO sanitary wares, SCG roof tile, smart-board, pipe, cement and others. SCG considers Vietnam as a targeted market to expand its building materials business in the next few years. At the moment, SCG is distributing many construction products in Vietnam such as smart wood, smart board, sanitary wares, and ceramic tiles. The group is also considering cement production in Vietnam in the near future. In 2010, SCG expected to achieve a sales volume of some US$9.1 million in Vietnam, a 30% year-on-year increase. The group also aims to obtain US$12.8 million in sales next year. SCG, which entered Vietnam in the 1990s, has constructed a large paper mill named Vina Kraft Paper Co., Ltd in Binh Duong Province’s My Phuoc 3 Industrial Park that started production early this year with an annual capacity of 220,000 tons of packaging paper products. SCG told the Daily on the sidelines of a two-day symposium on sustainable development organized by SCG in Bangkok this week that the group is strongly promoting a program of reducing, reusing and replenishing discharged disposals at this paper mill. Chaovalit Ekabut, president of SCG Paper, said since Vina Kraft Paper Co., Ltd started operation, SCG has invested a lot of money to reduce impacts on the environment by using recycled paper as input materials for production. The paper mill is also recycling water to minimize the need for raw water, and is also trying to control the energy consumption.