PAVIGRES

Manufacturing ceramic products since 1978. Pavigrés Cerâmicas SA is the result of a merger between Pavigrés, Grespor and Cerev, which were established, respectively, in 1978, 1988 and 1991. This merger occurred in 2004. We are still a completely private company, with 600 employees, that is currently ran by a second generation of managers who are focused on adjusting the company to the reality of the 21st century, to the market we face today, with economic difficulties on the one hand and technological, environmental and normative challenges on the other. The company's policies and decisions have always been based on two essential principles: our culture, which defines us and results from the principles that have always guided the company and from the experiences we have been going through since 1978 and, on the other hand, the fact that we are a company that was always directed towards a very broad export market. Our exports, which currently correspond to an average of 94% of our activity, distributed across nearly 85 different markets, forces Pavigrés to be continuously focused on broadening its ranges, according to its customers' needs and requests. Within this context, we also divide our activity between the project market, for which our technical range and, especially, the Pavigrés 21 concept are essential elements, and the distribution market, for which the residential and decorative porcelain stoneware ranges are very important. We still manufacture the Pavigrés glazed porcelain stoneware tiles, which were our first products, and the Cerev fast single-fired white body wall tiles, but our largest investments were in the Grespor technical decorative range, which currently absorbs most of our production capacity. In the technical porcelain stoneware area, we are still manufacturing the basic, unicolour, coarse-grain granite Grespor ranges - offering tiles ranging between the small 10x10cm format and large 120x60cm and 90x90cm formats. In the decorative technical porcelain stoneware area we are currently able to deal with most of the available techniques, from double loaded to tutta massa, including decorations made with digital technology, also available in the largest formats - 90x90cm and 120x60cm. Our ongoing investments on the manufacturing area will increase our porcelain stoneware production capacity in about 1,000,000 m2/ year until January 2015. At that time, our installed production capacity will be around 8,000,000 m2/yea