Ivanka, the company reinventing concrete was established in 2002 when Katalin Ivánka and her husband, András, returned home from Canada only to find a new concept for this longused material. Their beautiful floor and wall finishes have soon become popular in Hungary, and they contemplated leaving the small scale shop behind. Eleven years ago, the company gained recognition among architects in Japan and it was then that they decided to go global. In March 2012, Docler Investments was engaged in the funding of the enterprise with an equity injection of 240 million forints, which was deployed for the first steps towards mechanised production.

The company’s enterprise value has grown several times larger than this equity injection, and with a similarly successful cash fl ow performance they are standing on their own feet. Now they aspire to scale up within the course of three to five years: they identified a growth potential of a multiple of fi ve to ten. For that purpose, the financial involvement of a professional investor or a certain degree of restructuring may become inevitable, which is already partly underway considering their development into a medium-sized business of 70 employees. This year is dedicated to reviewing the portfolio, making divisional differentiation, expanding production capacities and carrying out investments into technology.

The vast majority of orders are composed of facade systems and related engineering services. In their most recent project, the company delivered 18 thousand square metres of concrete coating to India, used for the facade of a hospital under construction in Lakhnau. The oldest and second most important division is that of interior coatings. This includes large-scale hotel projects such as Hotel W in Amsterdam, which is a member of Starwood Hotels and Resorts. This year will see the launch of a separate division producing outdoor and sidewalk elements as well as furniture. There is a great deal of R&D and innovations activity going on within the company, for example a staircase structure ordered by the world-famous Zaha Hadid Architects, requiring both structural analysis and engineering design.