Swiss chemicals and construction materials giant Sika Group yesterday launched its new China headquarters and seventh manufacturing center in the country in Suzhou.

The company plowed $48 million into the new facilities, bringing its total investment in China to $100 million.

It is the company's third new facility to be opened in the past five years after a second plant in Guangzhou and an admixture plant in Dalian.

China is the world's biggest consumer of cement and a significant construction market, said Walter Gruebler, chairman of Sika Group's board of directors.

"Sika is very determined to undertake everything to gain a leading position in the promising and fast-growing Chinese market in the near future," said Gruebler, at the opening ceremony.

The company has maintained 30 to 50 percent annual growth globally in the past few years, and its China business has been growing even faster than the international average, said Sika CEO Ernst Baertschi.

He said China's demand for high-end and quality products has progressed rapidly in recent years, and that the industry is applying Western standards.

Baertschi predicted Sika's revenue in China would be tripled by 2010, and that the country would become Sika's No10 market in the world in the next three to five years. But he declined to reveal the current figures.

Sika focuses on sealing, bonding, damping, reinforcing and protecting bearing load structures in the construction and transportation sectors.

In China, it focuses on large-scale and key projects such as the construction of factory buildings, bridges, undergrounds, airports and high-speed railways, the CEO told China Daily.

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