Press Conference arranged by Sapa in Germany

Sapa Vertrieb initiated a press conference in Düsseldorf regarding the new Sapa on the German Market. This press confenrece was held November 20th in Düsseldorf's well known and traditional location "Industrie Club".

About 20 journalist from several magazines (e.g. Aluminium Praxis, Bauelemente Bau) and business papers as Handelsblatt and Financial Times Germany attended.

Arne Rengstedt (in the middleon the picture above), Group Vice President for Central Europe, presented the Sapa Group while Jacques Podszun (to the left) and Lothar Kanowski (to the right) focused on Sapa's German position and presence.

Arne introduced the company structure with its core operations as per Profiles, Building System and Heat Transfer as well as our position within the Orkla group - also in the context of the planned IPO. Further more he gave an overview about Sapa's investment plans e.g. in Asia and also about the fast developing Eastern Europe market.

Main message was that Germany is the biggest and most important profile market for Sapa in Europe. The intention is to grow by 10 % although the market will drop by ~ 4 % according to GDA prognosis.

Sapa wants to reach this target by improving its strengths. "We offer our customers the large competence and all-inclusive solutions of whole Sapa Group. But at the same time we use the advantages of medium-sized structured production sites which keeps us flexible and very close to the customers - speed boats in the market instead of a Titanic", said Jacques Podszun, Country Manager Germany.

Sapa Vertrieb - centralized sales organisation for German market - will support the customers with technical engineering and support and take the position as a intermediary between market and Sapa production plants to serve the customers in the best way and coordinate all sales activities in Germany. "One face to the customer - all Sapa know-how on one stop."

Especially for the journalist from outside the aluminum industry "our" metal is a black spot. So a further goal of this press conference was to bring the subject "aluminum" closer to the audience and to promote the advantages of aluminium. Lothar Kanowski, overall responsible for Sapa's German sales, explained that aluminium is a "green metal" consuming 95 % less energy when beeing recycled than in a primary production process. And beside this the possible field of applications with aluminum profiles  is nearly unlimited.

After the pressconference the comapny in Germany got really positive feedback from the participants. A couple of the journalist were interested in further introduction into aluminium and may use the opportunity to visit a Sapa plant for a hands-on demonstration of our daily business.