Profine: Eastern Europe with fastest growth
The Profine Group has posted a 2006 turnover of €848m, having achieved sales growth of 18%, against a budgeted 10%, and up on the 4% achieved in 2005.
Eastern Europe has been the fastest growth area for Profine group, with 41% sales growth in the region, followed by China with 34% growth. South Eastern Europe sales also grew strongly 17%, as did “new markets” with 13%.
Earnings (EBITDA) were also above the budgeted 8% increase, preliminary figures indicating growth above 10%. Profine’s chairman Gerhard Sommerer said: “We had initially forecast this encouraging situation for 2008.”
The three profile brands grew in volume by 21% to 297,000 tonnes, with Berlin-headquarted KBE doing best with 30% higher sales, followed by Trocal (formerly a HT Troplast brand) at 12% and Kömmerling at 10%, the latter’s sheet making up 13% sales growth, close to the group’s 12% sheet volume sales growth of 12% to 38,000 tonnes.
KBE’s growth is being supported by the start-up of eight extruders in 2Q 2007, boosting capacity in Berlin to 135,000 tpa.
Having reached almost 23,000tpa in 2005, rising to 40,000tpa in 2006 and forecast last year to reach 60,000tpa in 2007, capacity expansion at the Russian extrusion plant in Voskresensk near Moscow will now in fact rise to 90,000tpa in 2007, the group states, while extrusion operations in Khabarovsk, 800km east of Vladivostok, are scheduled to start in 2Q 2007 at an initial 3,000tpa. Sommerer says that a final decision on Siberian and Ukrainian plants will be made in 1H 2007.