44 Roca A global company Roca is a world leader in the bathroom space business and a point of reference in design, technology and sustainable development. Delivering products that shape lifestyles across the world and in different societies. The genesis of Roca dates back to 1917 as a Compania Roca Radiadores S.A, a company that exclusively produced cast iron radiators for domestic heating at its factory in Gavà, near Barcelona. However, the rapid success of new products in the market and its firm desire to grow led it to expand its areas of business with the aim of diversifying its activities. The outcome of which was in 1925, when it made its first cast iron boilers and, later in 1929, it commenced production of cast iron bathtubs. Roca entered the Vitreous China sanitary ware sector in 1936, and in 1954 it began to make faucets. A second Vitreous China factory was inaugurated in Alcalá de Henars (Madrid) in 1962. It was in 1963, with the start-up of an air-conditioning machine factory in Sabadell, near Barcelona, that Roca became one of the first Spanish enterprises to enter the emerging air conditioning market. The company’s entry into the tile industry took place in the 1980s.The founding of CerámicasdelFoix, which became a subsidiary company, marked the beginning of the current tiles business. In 1989, the company bought a sanitary ware factory in Portugal. In line with its growth strategy, the 1980s and 1990s witnessed the opening of sales subsidiaries, the consolidation of agreements with market-leading companies and the securing of takeovers and other business alliances. In 2002 Roca began corporate restructuring of the Group to organise the various areas of business into independent companies. To carry out this project, the new parent company Roca CorporaciónEmpresarial S.A. was set up. The restructuring process of the company culminated in 2005, with the sale of the heating and air-conditioning businesses in order to concentrate the corporation’s efforts on the bathroom business, which reached world leadership position in the early months of 2006. Today, Roca has marked its presence across five continents and has become a benchmark for progress, strength and excellence. Its broad commercial network covers more than 170 countries, has 78 manufacturing units and employs approximately 22,600 people worldwide. Roca is a wholly Spanish-owned multinational company whose capital belongs entirely to the family group descended from its founders.