Austrian group Austrotherm (Waldegg; www.austrotherm.at) has recently put another manufacturing facility, its third, onstream in Calan, Romania. Combined with the production that already exists at the site, the company says it will now be able to supply the west of the Balkan country faster and more efficiently with insulation materials of both white and grey EPS.

“Siebenbürgen (Transylvania) is one of the growth regions of central and northwest Romania,” says Austrotherm CEO, Klaus Haberfellner. “One-third of our customers is based in this region. The previous EPS plants are further away and were already operating at their capacity limit.”

Related: Austrotherm takes over XPS producer Zentyss in Romania

An additional area of 3,800 m² is now available in Calan for production, warehousing, and offices. “Thanks to the storage capacity, it is now possible to offer combination deliveries of EPS and XPS from the other Romanian plants,” explains Roxana Ghioca, who heads local sales and marketing at Austrotherm. Two other Austrotherm production facilities for EPS insulating materials in Romania are located in Bucharest and in Horia in the northeast of the country. The local production network also includes a production plant for XPS insulating sheets in Arad.

The Austrian insulation materials manufacturer has invested around EUR 6 mn in the new plant in Calan. With 26 facilities and 1,200 employees, the Austrotherm group posted total sales last year of EUR 517 mn.

On the subject of Romania, Austrotherm’s German competitor Knauf (Iphofen; www.knauf.de) recently reported the construction of two plants in that country. However, the focus there is not on EPS or other plastics, but on plasterboard, rock wool, and glass wool.