Cebu Belmont partners with US-based company

CEBU, Philippines - International company Victaulic, a leader in grooved and plain-end mechanical piping systems, has gained foothold in the southern Philippine market in its recent partnership with local home improvement and hardware player Cebu Belmont, Inc.

Cebu Belmont obtained the rights to distribute Victaulic’s products, most notably its fire protection solutions, the kind of which is now available in Cebu for the first time.

Victaulic was founded in New York City in 1925 to market a radical concept in the piping industry—a mechanical bolted coupling that would engage into pipe grooves and use a gasket seal. The concept of joining pipe with bolted mechanical couplings originated during World War I for rapid deployment of fuel and water lines to Allied forces.

Later, the company began to shift its focus to commercial piping applications to market its new innovative methods of joining pipes and expanded to many different countries around the world, the Philippines included.

Vice President Chester Lim of Cebu Belmont told business reporters Thursday they are excited with this new development, expressing confidence in Cebu’s active real estate and construction sectors to help create the needed demand for their new product lines.

Advantages

Lim pointed out that under the Building Code, any high-rise building or structure with at least four storeys is required to establish a fire protection system.

“The usual way is that the building has to secure a piping connection through which sprinklers could be attached,” he said. “And conventionally, you need to join the pipes so you weld them.”

But unlike traditional methods of joining pipes for fire protection systems in high-rise developments, which take highly trained workers to complete, Lim said Victaulic’s products will eliminate the need to hire skilled welders because of the ease of adjoining the pipes.

“With Victaulic, you just groove both ends, put in the couplers, clamp them and you’re done,” Lim said. This convenience is said to promote the worker’s productivity and officials assured that the connection will remain 100 percent leak-free.

Apart from trimming down huge labor costs and saving a lot of time, Lim noted that this technology will not expose workers on the risk of inhaling harmful gases which is likely to occur when they are welding.

Why Belmont?

Officials shared Victaulic has been present in the Philippines since the 80’s, but it was not until in the last few years that a Manila-based trading firm called YekYeu Merchandising became an official importer of Victaulic’s product lines.

YekYeu’s owner Andrew Tan revealed the business is gaining ground among Manila’s contractors and engineers and there is no reason, he said, for the Cebu market not to follow suit.

Tan said Cebu Belmont’s reputation as a seasoned market player, along with its strong background in tools, is its edge over other stores, which was part of the considerations why Victaulic chose it as its pilot distributing firm in the south.

In addition, Tan pointed out the similarities between Victaulic’s and Belmont’s business philosophies—to deliver the best quality of products and services to customers—as a common denominator helping both companies to come up with an arrangement.

‘Educate people’

Victaulic’s general manager David Sharkey, however, admitted that in order to sell this new-generation fire protection technology, it’s important to educate the people on its commercial use.

“It’s a product that you have to create the demand. We create demand through talking to contractors and engineers, making product demonstration and going to construction sites, telling them why they need these things,” Sharkey said.

Sharkey, who also heads Victaulic’s operations in Southeast Asia (SEA) and more recently, Australia, calls the Philippines as “a developing market for us.” In general, they are looking at SEA as their market of focus, especially now that the region is on the part of the world where their business is growing rapidly.

Their market share, Sharkey said, continues to grow owing to the new products that they keep introducing which he claimed better than the old ones or what their competitors are offering.

He also said that most of the products they manufacture are patented, especially the original Victaulic couplings.

In a management tool they call a “vitality index,” they track the growth of their patented products with 30 percent as the target. Sharkey said they are currently hitting this goal. (FREEMAN)