Developer Pruksa banks on innovation to boost revenue

Innovative, energysaving and healthy homes will be the main ideas that will drive Pruksa Real Estate Plc as it aims to achieve sales revenue of Bt100 billion in 2021, the comฌpany’s chief executive officer Piya Prayong said.
Under the business strategy, the company has set aside an investment budget of about one per cent of total revenue for research and development of its products and also learning global technology to develop its residential projects, especially through the use of its construcฌtion system in collaboration with German firm EBAWE Anlagentechnik GmbH.
“We have had success in reducing our construction cost in developing our residential projects by up to 40 per cent when compared with our comฌpetitors, thanks to our precast technology system developed since 2009,” Piya said.
Precast technology reduces the time taken for constructing residential buildings from an average of eight months for sinฌgle detached houses to only 70 days to build and transfer to the customers, and 45 days for townhouses.
At present, the company is also developing its precast technology to build lowrise and highrise condominium projฌects by take an average time of one month for each level. 
For example, an eightstorey condominium building will be built in only eight months against the normal 18 months, while highrise condominiums 36 storeys high, would take time about 20 months.
Marcus Scheler, head of sales back office of EBAWE Anlagentechnik GmbH, said the company has provided its precast technology to Pruksa Real Estate Plc in Thailand just as it has to property firms in other countries in Asia such as China, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
Precast technology, developed in Germany, has been used for more than 60 years, speedฌing up the construction process and requiring fewer staff to operate the plant and construcฌtion site, Scheler said.
He added that in Germany, it took only four days to build a 150squaremetre single detached house, and one week for a onelevel high building. 
“We took a long time to develop our technology to serve all kinds of residences, here and in other countries,” Scheler added.
EBAWE is one of the global market leaders in developing industrial production plants according to the highest technical requirements, and supply tailormade solutions to the manufacture of precast concrete panels.
Pruksa Real Estate Plc is one of EBAWE’s customers to develop the precast system for residential property in Thailand.
Piya said that up to 50 per cent of its residential projects now use the precast system, manufactured by its seven production plants that have proฌduction capacity of 5.5 million square metres a year.
“Our business strategy in the next decade is to control our cost by maintaining our current staff levels at a total of 3,000 by outsourcing some of the busiฌness process to our partners,” he said.
He added that precast is a process that has speeded up construction and also reduced cost. The company is also developing its own innovative sysฌtem to develop residences under the Pruksa 4.0 policy such as an automated home system where all home accessories are connected with an online and application system, develฌop healthy homes with emphaฌsis on landscape, and homes that expend low energy.
“Our concept is to construct residential property that serves all aspects of the customers’ lifestyle by creating more value for our customers,” he said.
This is a part of its efforts to boost total revenue to Bt100 billion in 2021, near double its target of Bt50.2 billion for this year, Piya said.
Valueadded residential property revenue will account for 20 per cent of total revenue this year, but increase to 50 per cent of total revenue in 2021, he added.