L

arge-scale Thai conglomerate Siam Cement Group (SCG) is ready to introduce the Indonesian market to its three flagship products, which are made at the company'€™s newly established cement plant in Karawang, West Java.

Branding and marketing manager of SCG Cement-Building Materials, Atthapol Phongcharoensuk, on Wednesday said that the company was ready to present three new products that he claims to be
innovative materials, to cater to Jakarta'€™s construction industry as its initial market.

The products are the energy-saving lightweight concrete SCG Smartblock, the quick-to-dry Portland composite cement SCG Cement PCC, as well as the ready-mixed concrete Jayamix by SCG Super Concrete.

The SCG Smartblock, Phongcharoensuk explained, was produced by the Thai giant'€™s newly established concrete plant Karawang, which began operations in April with a production capacity of 450,000 cubic meters per annum.

'€œSCG Smartblock is our very first lightweight concrete product that uses our own SCG brand in the ASEAN market,'€ he added.

The company claims that the concrete can save 30 percent of a home'€™s energy usage with its ability to block heat.

The SCG Cement PCC, meanwhile, will be produced by the company'€™s Sukabumi plant '€” also in West Java '€” which is expected to commence commercial operations in the third quarter of next year.

The plant, with a capacity of 1.8 million tons per year, will be run by SCG'€™s wholly owned subsidiary PT Semen Jawa, with investment totaling US$356 million.

Prior to the facility'€™s completion, Phongcharoensuk said that the company would import the product from the its home country and was planning to bring in 30,000 tons of the Portland cement in its first shipment.

The company also aims to launch the Jayamix by SCG Super Concrete in July, hoping to market 30,000 cubic meters of the product before year-end. The concrete will be produced by Jaya Readymix, an Indonesian company that was fully acquired by SCG in 2012, marking the Thai firm'€™s venture into the country'€™s cement business.

SCG plans to invest roughly $7 billion over the next 5 years, more than half of which would go outside Thailand, with Indonesia becoming its main expansion focus.

SCG'€™s portfolio includes holdings in several companies in Indonesia. The company, through SCG Building Materials Co. Ltd., holds a 96.31 percent stake in Jakarta-listed PT Keramika Indonesia Assosiai. SCG, through SCG Chemicals Co., Ltd., also holds a 30.03 percent stake in PT Chandra Asri Petrochemical.

Phongcharoensuk said that in the last two years alone, the company had disbursed about $1 billion of its Indonesian investment, which includes acquiring packaging company PT Primacorr Mandiri late last year with a total investment of $12.4 million.

He added that Indonesia was the largest contributor to SCG'€™s regional building materials revenue, contributing about 30 percent of the total figure.

This year, he said, the company aims to have its Indonesian revenue rise by 15 percent, having also included the country'€™s projected slowdown in the construction business during the election year.

Last year, SCG Indonesia booked a 8 percent year-on-year (y-o-y) increase in revenue to Rp 4.49 trillion ($380 million). Its assets rose by 17 percent y-o-y to Rp 13.1 trillion thanks to its Sukabumi, Primacorr and Chandra Asri investments.

Phongcharoensuk said that the company hoped to be the country'€™s leading solution provider of cement and building materials, while acknowledging that it faces stiff competition from well-established Indonesian players such as state-run giant Semen Indonesia.

Cement associations have predicted that the country'€™s construction-related industry this year would take national cement consumption to 63 million tons, up by about 6 percent from 59 million tons last year.