The manufacturer of coatings and ceramic floors Cesantoni announced a investment of 1,600 million pesos for the coming months, which will be used to expand its facilities in Zacatecas, as well as for its distribution centers in the country and even target the United States market.
Yaco Reimers, CEO of Cesantoniexplained that with this investment Ceramic production will double from 6 million square meters, which were produced in 2020, to 12 million that the firm is expected to produce by the end of this year.
“We are going to set up a plant, which is called polishing, which is going to be the largest in America,” he explained.
“And the new plant is made up of two furnaces, with the grinding line, enamelling, press, selection, a complete plant that will produce an additional 6 million meters.”
With this investment The creation of 450 direct jobs is expected, but they are also looking for new markets to place their products and meet the excess demand of orders that are already registered.
However, for the manager, the medium-term objectives are already beginning to be defined, since he hopes that by 2023 Cesantoni reaches an annual production of 19 million square meters of ceramic products and does not rule out that the firm may issue debt on the stock market even this year.
The US market, an opportunity
For the company from Zacatecas, the war between Russia and Ukraine left a gap in the supply of supplies for high-end ceramics produced in Spain and Italy, so in the face of lower production, higher logistics costs and, therefore, a higher price, Mexican tiles and floors have a chance to supply the US market.
“Now the Spanish and Italians who want to make porcelain cannot, there is a very small niche that can do it, when before they were very strong in that part, then everything that entered America was porcelain, but it is beginning to get complicated”, Reimers pointed out.
And it is that, according to the manager, high-end apartments with the necessary technical requirements came to the United States from Europe; however, because the production of Cesantoni complies with the standards, the intention is to take advantage of this situation to have greater penetration in the market of the neighboring country to the north.
“Our strategy is to substitute imports, we are going on that segment,” he explained.
“In the United States we have a very large number of requests, we want to do it strategically, very well cared for, the United States market is huge.”
High quality, the Cesansoni strategy
For the company, selling high-end products allows them to serve the segment least affected in what corresponds to the buildingwhich is residential and which is also the one that supports the price increase the most.
“The more complex the product is, the more it supports those changes, it is not as susceptible as the economic product, expensive products have more tolerance,” said the businessman.
However, high-end production requires more investment in supplies and installations, as well as practically niche formats.
“We are the only Mexican company that makes 100% white pasta, and it is not a matter of color, it is an issue that brings technical benefits far superior to a red paste,” explained Yaco Reimers.
On the other hand, he commented that while about 70% of Mexican production focuses on the manufacture of mosaics of 50 centimeters or less, Cesantoni It has products with larger sizes that even exceed one meter, but which are more complex to produce.
“In Mexico, the porcelain floor culture was not so high, because it is a more expensive product on the market, despite the fact that it brings superior technical attributions, but it makes a lot of sense in the north of the United States,” he pointed out.
“There they have to use porcelain tiles, because a floor in temperatures of less than 10 degrees outside will get water and with the thermal shock it will break.”