Interview with Oliver Esper, CTO of Xella Group
Oliver Esper, born 1964, started his career in the lime and cement industry after having obtained an engineering degree from RWTH Aachen. Following several years with various building materials businesses, he joined Xella in 2001 and worked as Chief Technical Officer for all sand-lime block and autoclaved aerated concrete activities in Germany until 2007. He has been the CTO of the entire Xella Group since 2008, overseeing the production and technology used in over 90 plants (lime works, gypsum fiberboard plants, sand-lime block and aerated concrete operations) in 20 countries worldwide.
BFT INTERNATIONAL: Mr. Esper, Xella is the largest autoclaved aerated concrete producer in the world. What‘s the annual AAC output of the Xella operations?
O.E.: Our 43 Ytong plants will produce more than 7.5 million m³ of aerated concrete this year. But we had previously achieved a global output of over 10 million m³ of Ytong products used in buildings in periods of high construction activity when considering our minority shareholdings and licensees.
BFT INTERNATIONAL: Which of your production sites are most productive according to your internal benchmark?
O.E.: The productivity of a plant...
