Corus has the global rights for steel sheeting but apparently the steel sheeting industry works by way of lots of licenses. I think it is Bluescope that would be the local producer (so instead of colourbond it would be solarbond?).
The other thing is that Corus is now owned by Tata which is the fifth biggest steel company in the world so DYE got lucky by signing global rights over to Corus (which at the time was a stand alone operation).
The big market that Corus is looking at is the industrial sheds. As one of the DYE blokes said at the opening of their new premises, owners of these huge commercial buildings try to optimise how they use each sq metre of these buildings but then they have the whole outer structure being underutilised. Besides the EU is pushing ahead with more exacting standards for all new buildings in Europe.
I recollect the chairman saying that Corus is looking for 20% of their steel sheeting to being the solar sheeting and for them to be using the product commercially by 2011 (that's just over 2 years away folks :D ).
At the AGM they said that they will use three of the biggest chemical manufacturers to churn out industrial quantities of the ingredients so if it gets the go ahead there should be a relatively short ramp up period. As an aside however as far as I know they have still not confirmed that they can produce the stuff at industrial volumes yet.
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