Innovative building materials and solutions: creating the cities of the future

Transcript

The building materials industry today is being asked to satisfy the rising demand for housing and infrastructure, while also reducing its carbon footprint. In the first of our three videos with Marcel Cobuz, CEO of TITAN Group, he explains how TITAN has responded to these conflicting calls with innovative low-carbon products and optimisation technology – while posting its fourth year of top-line growth and listing US business TITAN America on the New York Stock Exchange.

World Finance: The building materials industry today is being asked to satisfy the rising demand for housing and infrastructure while also reducing its carbon footprint. Joining me down the line is Marcel Cobuz from TITAN Group, Marcel, how is TITAN responding to these calls?

Marcel Cobuz: For us, offering innovative, sustainable products and solutions is a key pillar of our growth strategy.

Our commitment to customer-centric innovation is guiding us into established, developed, and emerging areas within the construction industry. By collaborating with customers from the very early design stage, we inform the development of our innovative, low carbon products and services. And this is twinned with bold actions we can take to reduce our carbon footprint and improve the construction: making it faster, making it even more affordable.

More recently, we are integrating circular construction solutions, supporting the development of safe, resilient, and sustainable infrastructure in cities. At the same time, we are constantly reducing our own carbon footprint, optimising our processes and across the value chain.

World Finance: Tell me more about your growth strategy, how has it been paying off?

Marcel Cobuz: We made 2024 as a transformational year for TITAN, both in terms of delivering results, but also in terms of continuing building capabilities.

2024 was our fourth year of top-line growth. We had record sales and over-proportional EBITDA growth. It was full of milestones, like building capabilities in attracting new talent in areas like low carbon products, decarbonisation of our processes, but also an important milestone for us has been the New York Stock Exchange listing of our US business, TITAN America: a bold move which strengthens our growth platform and unlocks more growth potential.

Beyond this, we expanded our portfolio, diversifying our offers through acquisitions, bolt-ons and partnerships in aggregates and alternative materials. All these moves are reinforcing our ability to offer our customers top-quality lower-carbon materials as well as to enhance our own capabilities.

World Finance: And what differentiates TITAN from your competitors?

Marcel Cobuz: We operate in emerging as well as in established and developed markets, and we are a local business with local teams, local customers, local assets.

At TITAN, our foundation is the quality of materials and services we offer to our customers. As we say, you are as good as the last complaint from the customer. And this, the 6,000-people commitment for operational excellence, is the most important principle which drives our operation.

We innovate in many ways in our operations – with customers, across the value chain, across the ecosystems – to better serve our customers, to reduce our carbon footprint, and of course to optimise our own operations and efficiency. Not to forget about digitalisation, which is a great example of a field which completely restructures and reshuffles the cards on the table, and where innovation creates strong results on all fronts.

Watch the second part of this interview with Marcel Cobuz: TITAN Group: Sustainable and smart construction, powered by digital technology

And the third and final video from this shoot: Investing in innovation: TITAN Group’s €40m commitment to transform construction