If Global Hardware gets its way the Polypropylene Random Copolymer (PPR) pipe which it currently manufactures and markets in Guyana and elsewhere in the Caribbean will seize a considerable share of the domestic plumbing market currently controlled by the familiar PVC pipe.
Visitors to last weekend’s Building Expo at the National Stadium, Provi-dence, evinced more than passing interest in a product which the company says has been on the market for than a year.
While PPR is priced above the more commonplace PVC, the company is offering a lifetime warranty, so confident it appears to be in the product. Parmanand Samaroo who holds the post of General Coordinator of Queens Atlantic Investment, Global Hardware’s parent company, estimates that PPR could have a lifetime of between fifty and one hundred years.
Up until now the marketing of the product appears to have been relatively low key. Samaroo says that while there were a number of enquiries about the product during last week’s Building Expo the feedback that they have received is that it is still little-known locally. PPR, Samaroo says, can be utilized in the residential, commercial and industrial sectors. Currently, costs are around 10 per cent higher than PVC and what Global Hardware is seeking to do, according to Samaroo, is to create a “pricing model” that will make the product more competitive.
He points to what he says are the advantages of PPR over PVC. Constant exposure to the sun eventually renders PVC pipes brittle while they have no protection against build-up of algae and other bacteria. That is not the case with the PPR pipe, the outer layer of which is ultra-violet coated. .And Samaroo adds, the entire process is environmentally friendly, utilizing Polyproprian, a by-product of petroleum and imported from India and, more recently, from countries in the Middle East.
Samaroo says that among the other advantages of using PPR are its weight, its efficient thermal insulation, its impact and abrasion resilience and its resistance to corrosion. It is, Samaroo says, the safest material for manufacturing because it is lead-free. The product is also suitable for use in the mining and oil and gas distribution sectors. The
