Beroa’s Chief Executive Officer, Jorge Álvarez, explains about the restructuring and the aims and expectations of the company.

Originally in 1997, Beroa acquired a majority interest in Karrena GmbH. By 2004, the Beroa Group had added Forter of Portugal.

In 2005, we embraced an expansive strategy in order to make Beroa No. 1 in its field of business: refractory lining and chimney & tall structure construction.

Between 2005 and today, some wellestablished companies were integrated into the group, along with forming new entities which resulted in successful outcomes and future opportunities for Beroa.

These entities included: Bierrum in England, CTP in France, Burwitz in Germany, Refraline in South Africa, York Linings in Australia, CRI in Italy, Altac in Spain, Steelcon in Denmark, NovoCos in Germany, Ramco in USA, Beroa Gulf in the Gulf region and RCC in Saudi Arabia. Beroa also acquired a minority stake in International Chimney Corporation located in the USA in 2004.

Nº 1 EPC Solutions
As a result, we have turned Beroa into a world leader, operating worldwide, providing leading EPC solutions in the refractory and chimney and tall structures market.

The integration of those companies into the group took place at a time when our industry was experiencing record activity. Our main objective was to deliver what our clients were asking for. The focus was on operations and production rather than on consolidation and integration. We accomplished this expansion strategy while keeping our focus on providing our customers the highest quality product.

Through this period, we knew that we had a number of different companies that had to be brought together.

Then came the recession, with a significant reduction in business activity and in results.

The focus was instantly redirected towards operational efficiency, consolidation, cost reduction and overall business improvement. We seized this opportunity to become more efficient and to drive the creation of a stronger group.

We had a very good basis on which to make major improvements: the knowledge within our own companies, fresh perspectives from a large number of companies who had just joined the group; and a highly committed professional team of leaders in the companies.

With this basis, our aim is very clear: to be the sustainable leading EPC company within our sector. To do so, we needed our clients to perceive our products and services as better than those of other companies. As a result, we work closely with our clients in order to come up with the best technical solutions for each project, and we are always available for them, any time, anywhere.

The best talent with us
To achieve this, we need to maintain the best talent, working in a collaborative, open, honest and safe environment.

For the last few months we have been very busy pursuing this strategy. In this special newsletter, we want to tell you about the changes we have made in the group to enable us to accomplish our demanding goals.

Accordingly, we have merged some operations to optimize and align resources: Karrena and Burwitz are now Beroa Deutschland; Karrena Spain and Forter are now Beroa Iberia; CTP and SEFI / FICA are now Beroa France; and York Linings and Forter Australia are now Beroa Australia.

There are new faces, as well, in some of our companies. We have to have the best talent with us and we have worked hard to achieve and maintain that. We have changed the name of the refractory companies, as well, so that the word Beroa forms part of the name. It reflects our commitment to provide our clients worldwide with uniform standards of quality and safety. This commitment is sustained through a number of programs that are currently being implemented. We will give you further details in coming newsletters.

Key areas for Beroa are training of employees and continuous improvement in the products that we provide. We live in a different world now. Times are changing, and the pace of change is very fast. We know that our success lies in our ability to be more flexible, more competitive and safer. The only way to achieve that is to have a strong team of people working together. We have set our sights on that goal.