clestra_cleaner, faster, better

Business World Asia |July -August 2015

July - August 2015 | Business World Asia

With over 100 years of construction

industry experience, Clestra Hauserman is

the leading global manufacturer and sup-

plier of demountable partition systems.

They offer a wide variety of customized

solutions tailored to excel in any environ-

ment. In particular, they are well equipped

to service the commercial, industrial, trans-

port, healthcare and educational sectors,

where their prefabricated partition systems

provide their greatest value.

Cleaner, Faster

BETTER


PREFABRICATED VERSUS CONVENTIONAL

The company was founded in 1913 by Earl F. Hauserman, who pioneered the con-cept of movable partitions to allow for easier workspace alterations and rearrangements. The idea revolutionized the industry, and it’s one that continues to dominate the market today. “He was saying that a wall should not be fixed,” says Gilles Marino, Managing Direc-tor of Clestra’s South Asian operation. “That way a company doesn’t have to destroy it when they want to grow and increase their room size because they can just move the pre-fabricated partition somewhere else. What’s

interesting about our company is that Mr. Hauserman was the first to create this, and 102 years later, we are still proposing the same concept.” Clestra Hauserman commenced Clestra Limited Singapore in 2005. Back then, they were represented by an agent and did not have their own office in the region. When Gilles arrived on the scene in 2011, his role was to establish the company directly on the market. Shortly thereafter, he opened the company’s first office in Singapore and hired two employees. Today, their team consists of nine employ-


PREFABRICATED VERSUS CONVENTIONAL

ees who are very involved on each project and “work closely as a team.” The company also has factories in China and Korea to bet-ter serve customers throughout the region.

Clestra’s clients enjoy a number of advan-tages over using conventional drywall meth-ods. To start, their prefabricated partition systems offer superior acoustic performance − a quality highly valued by clients seeking to create quieter environments, such as banks and insurance companies, for instance. In

fact, Clestra performs thorough laboratory tests on their partitions to determine how many decibels they can absorb to maximize sound reduction. The company’s prefabricated partitions also stand out in the market due to their monoblock system, which allows the fully furnished panels − complete with rockwool interior and paint finish − to be assembled onsite “like pieces of a big Lego.” “So all we need to do is put ceiling and floor channels in, assemble the partition pan-els and we can build entire rooms in a short time,” Gilles explains. “Office relocations


and re-organizations will of course follow the same principle, saving time and money for the clients, as we will not disturb their live office while people are working.” This gives Clestra the ability to perform stringent quality control testing on products before they leave the factory. The company’s factories are certified by ISO 9001 (quality management system) and ISO 14001 (envi-ronmental management) to ensure they are delivering top quality systems to their clients every time. Moreover, prefabricated partition sys-tems can be installed without the help of

subcontractors or tradesmen, making instal-lation much faster and safer while also being far less invasive and messy in the workspace compared to conventional methods. Lastly, the company’s partition systems are certified by the Singapore Green Build-ing Council (SGBC), one of Asia’s top green organizations. Clestra Limited Singapore joined the SGBC two years ago, and they have since had their prefabricated partition systems recognized as being “much greener than the conventional way.” Case in point, conventional partitions often use glue and harsh chemicals during


the assembly process, whereas Clestra’s de-mountable partition systems are completely free of both toxins. Additionally, prefabri-cating their products offsite allows them to contain airborne detritus like dust and paint fumes, which can be particularly problem-atic onsite.

In 2012, Clestra Limited Singapore pre-fabricated and installed four kilometers worth of partition walling over 18 floors for DBS Bank in Marina Bay. Due to the speed and efficiency of their prefabricated monob-

lock systems, the company was able to com-plete the project in just five months. Clestra earned the contract because the original specified suppler − a competitor of theirs that uses conventional methods − couldn’t work within the tight time con-straints. As the only company on the market with prefabricated partition systems, Clestra excelled on the project, earning a certificate of appreciation from the main contractor upon completion. The company’s portfolio boasts other successful ventures, including a government project in Hong Kong where they delivered

PORTFOLIO OF SUCCESS


approximately ten kilometers of prefabricat-ed partition walling − over 150 containers of material. They also customized a special pre-cut wood and glass partition system using their prefabricated monoblock system for a client in Singapore in 2013, which required only minimal onsite carpentry work during installation. Again, the green advantages of using prefabricated partition systems fac-tored in, helping that client achieve Green Mark Gold status on their building.

Since joining the company in 2011, Gilles

has helped grow their South East Asian op-eration significantly. In that time, he has established a number of key partnerships across the region in locations like Indonesia, the Philippines, Myanmar and even Papua New Guinea. In order to develop that network, Clestra Limited Singapore is now focused on grow-ing their brand in those emerging markets, especially in Indonesia where demand is “blooming quite a bit.” They have a number of major projects surfacing in those areas, in-cluding the one they recently completed for the Australian Embassy in Jakarta − the larg-

IN BLOOM


est Australian Embassy in the world. “We delivered one-and-a-half kilometres of partition systems for it − again using the monoblock system − with very good acous-tic performance,” says Gilles. Moving forward, Gilles expects the de-mand for Clestra’s prefabricated partition systems to increase significantly due to the steady inflation of labor costs in Southeast Asia. Since the company’s systems allow cli-ents to cut back significantly on manpower, one can certainly expect to see Clestra Lim-ited Singapore’s stock in the market continue to rise. “When you compare our prefabricated monoblock partitions to the conventional ways of doing a wall, you realize that prefab-

rication really makes sense,” he concludes. “Nowadays in Asia, clients are more and more realizing the benefits of prefabricat-ing the products as much as possible offsite in order to reduce onsite labor costs, in ad-dition to receiving something both cleaner and faster, with better quality.” Being aware that workplaces must provide the environment and the tools that foster creativity in businesses and people by inte-grating new technologies, Clestra is also pre-paring to launch new plug & play solutions. They believe these revolutionary solutions “will bring real innovation to the workplace, in a world where the answer is always at our fingertips.”

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