Since its inception in 1968, Kerakoll has been the international leader in the green building sector, providing environmentally responsible and resource-efficient building materials throughout the building's life cycle. It offers materials and services in the applied chemical sector for building applications. It has been on a journey to meet the needs of current generations without jeopardizing future generations' ability to meet their own needs. Ahzam Javed, director of Kerakoll, explains Kerakoll's position in the Indian market and how it is meeting the requirements with its current and future market position. Can you tell us about your current engagement with Indian market and also your existing market shares? We are very engaged with the Indian market. That’s how I would like to put it. At the group level, at the company level, we are the company that was founded more than 50 years ago, and we are based out of the city of Sassuolos, which is in north Italy. Kerakoll first came to India in 2006, so that's when we kind of jumped into the Indian market, and since then we've made a lot of investments over time to better establish ourselves and raise the level of flooring in the industry. In 2014, we brought our first state-of-the art manufacturing unit in Vadodara. And now we are in the brownfield project, which will be completed in a few weeks, and we will have doubled the plant's production capacity, making us one of the largest construction chemical manufacturing facilities, and it will continue to have the cutting-edge technology that we brought from Italy. So India produced in the year 2022 more than 1.3 billion sq m of tiles, which includes ceramic as well as porcelain tiles, and we can say that more than 80% of that was for domestic consumption, so we are looking at anywhere from 1/2 to 1 billion sq m of domestic consumption. We are very focused on the flooring market, as well as the stone market, which is worth an additional 150 billion square meters. Since the inception of the company, we have been making a lot of investments in training the stakeholders with the right application technique for our latest and top-end products and solutions in order to push this industry in the right direction. What are some of the delegate solutions you offer for the metro rail process? As a company, we have proven our capabilities in the airport and large-scale infrastructure segments, and now we are keenly looking at the development of metro spaces, where we have already started to do work with the Delhi and Mumbai metros. The real differentiator for us as a company is combining water proofing solutions with high-end floor and tile and stone laying solutions and offering an integrated portfolio of products, solutions, and services to our customers. When we look at the industry, the core capabilities of the manufacturers are either waterproofing products or flooring products, but having the right portfolio of both solutions put together has been lacking. We have done a lot of work in the airport infrastructure space. So starting with Terminal 3 in New Delhi, where more than 10 lakh square feet of tiles were laid using our products, Bangalore, both phases 1 and 2, where more than 5 lakh square feet of flooring were installed with our product. Last but not least, we were the exclusive partners for the flooring tiles and stone laying solution at Mopa airport, which was recently inaugurated by our prime minister. We are now paying close attention to the metro station space. From the data that we have, roughly 450 metro stations across the country are either in the design phase or the construction phase. So what we have done is put together a very experienced team to cater to the needs of this segment. We have brought some of our best solutions and products to address this need over the last decade. If you talk about the Delhi, Mumbai, or Bangalore airports, we have a segment of our products that is based on gel technology. These are the structural adhesives; they can withstand very high loading conditions and situations on job sites that have a lot of vibration and heavy foot traffic, so we do offer this entire portfolio where we have the entire bonded system that starts from the screed to the gel adhesives. Some of these projects extend to coastal areas high on humidity augmenting the rate of corrosion, what additional protection is required to safeguard the infrastructure in such places? The concrete structures in the coastal areas are highly vulnerable. The reason is because of their direct and indirect exposure to the conditions where there is moisture, salt, and humidity-laden air that comes in frequent contact with the concrete structure, and as a result of that, there is a very important chloride ion penetration that happens in the concrete. So concrete is always porous, and humidity-laden air finds an easy way to end these kinds of structures. As a result of this, the steel reinforcement in the concrete starts to corrode over a period of time, becoming weak and thus weakening the entire structure. So we don’t foresee the Indian market moving from where it is to being able to protect the entire slab. So there are some steps that can be taken in order to make this concrete safer. We are primarily talking about the use of high-density concrete, which can be achieved by mixing ordinary Portland cement with GGBS or slag cement to give it a higher density. This higher density reduces the porosity of the concrete fundamentally, which then doesn’t allow the penetration of moisture-laden air or liquids. Apart from that, the right water and cement ratio is very crucial, as is using the right grade of cement and the right ratio of cement to aggregate in terms of mix design. Adequate curing and compaction also make the concrete more durable and extends the structure's service life. Apart from that, in general, in the coastal areas within the country, we have a lot of very old structures that need timely introduction of retrofitting, repair, and protection, and that should be taken up at the right time before it is too late for the recovery of the structure to be repaired using various retrofitting and repair solutions that are available in the market. What is your take on the load bearing capacity of your flooring solutions, more so since in infra projects like metro stations they need to handle a heavy footfall of passengers daily? As a rule of thumb, when we talk about flooring that is subjected to vibration or high traffic, the minimum compressive strength that we are looking at is around 25 mega pascals or more. Aside from load bearing capacity, it is also critical to consider the entire bonded system. So fundamentally, players like us enter when the concrete is laid, and then it's our job to take it to the final surface. So between the concrete and final covering material like tiles, stones, etc., there is the bonded system, which plays a very important part. The right combination of mechanical strength and flexural strength as opposed to the transversal deformation of the system all play a crucial role in having the right solution delivered at the site. With the Kerakoll system, we can easily reach a load bearing capacity of more than 30 mega pascal, but as I said, it is very important for the adhesives to play a crucial role. So having an adhesive that is structural grade is very important. It’s important because when we have a lot of vibrations, when we have a structure that is subjected to extreme mechanical and thermal stress cycles, the structure keeps moving; it's expanding or contracting continuously. In a situation like this, adhesives have to play a crucial role by being able to take that stress and transmit it within the system without failing. Because adhesives fail as a part of the bonded system, your finishing material fails. So the load bearing capacity of the bonded system, flexural strength, transversal deformation, and the role that the adhesive can play in being from the weaker member to the strongest member of the entire bonded system are all critical to the long-term durability and of these types of areas of use. What are some of the innovative products you will introduce in the Indian market this year? I cannot disclose a lot of that, but I did speak about the gel adhesives. So we have launched this product, which is one of the best tile adhesives available in the industry. It’s been almost a year, and currently we are in the stage of listening to the market and building and incorporating some of the needs and requirements that have been coming from our customers and contractors. So the fine tuning of this adhesive is one thing. We are also bringing in new polythene-based adhesives, which will be totally manufactured in India, and that will have additional external areas of use, particularly focusing on the infrastructure and high-load situations. Apart from that, we are working on the entire portfolio of concrete repair and retrofit solutions with some of the best technology available in the European market, and we are going to be launching them soon in the Indian market.