Materials Science

Sarat Chandak, CEO, RAK Ceramics, on how the company has grown steadily with new range of products and emerging novel materials and designs.

- Jayashree Mendes

You have a vast footprint around the world. Could you tell us about that?

We have two kinds of operations: manufacturing and commercial. With nearly 33 offices across the world, we have a presence in Europe, Middle East, Saudi Arabia, and other GCC countries as well as, India, Australia and New Zealand, Singapore, among others. Most of the commercial operations are regional offices. When it comes to manufacturing we do have manufacturing set up in Ras-al-Khaimah, (UAE) which is our group headquarters, India (Samalkot), Bangladesh and Iran.

As a strategy, we have acquired capacity in India and commissioned a plant last year for ceramics. We’ve invested in greenfield joint venture in Morbi and that is expected to be commissioned by the year-end. In India, we manufacture in Morbi as well as Kakinada (Samalkot)

How has RAK Ceramics grown in the last year or so?

The Indian operation has seen a top line growth of 17% in 2017. We did see a slight setback in 2015 and 2016, due to management changes, but all that is behind us now.

Together, both the plants will help us double capacity from 8 million m2 to 16 million m2 by end of 2018.

How do you look at designs in this competitive market?