RIA STONE, Fábrica de Louça de Mesa em Grés, S.A.

The Ria Stone (RIAS) factory was created in June 2012 to produce porcelain stoneware articles for domestic use, its headquartered in Portugal/Aveiro/Ílhavo, and it has a social capital of 4.550.000€. The Vista Alegre Atlantis SGPS SA Group is its sole stockholder detaining 100% of the total capital of the Ria Stone factory.
key facts about RiaStone:
• RiaStone Start of Sales was in May 2014
• RiaStone has one main client the Swedish company IKEA
• RiaStone manufactures 48 million stoneware pieces yearly for IKEA
• RiaStone production is mainly (99%) exported to the European Market Zone, namely PT/ES/FR/IT/DE • RiaStone facilities have 26500 sqm
• RiaStone employs 270 specialized factory workers
The Ria Stone factory produces porcelain stoneware articles for domestic use for its Swedish customer IKEA. In 2011 IKEA has launched to the Global Market a procurement process intended for the sourcing of a strategically placed production factory, which would be able to attain the quality levels necessary for the fabrication of IKEA branded reference products, while maintaining competitive market pricing levels in the Global Market Space. In 2012, IKEA awarded to Ria Stone a 7-year contract to produce the main line of IKEA porcelain stoneware tableware targeting the global market.
To match the competiveness required by its main customer IKEA, Ria Stone developed a completely automated production process of isostatic formed, single-fired porcelain stoneware for utilitarian use. As upcoming external challenges to Ria Stone, IKEA has recently launched a request for the expansion of the Ria Stone production output by a factor of +60% upwards from the present production levels of 30 million stoneware tableware pieces per year. In parallel as continued internal production line challenges Ria Stone has the need to diminish its current scrap rate from 10% to 2%, as well as the optimization of its production line as to lower environmentally impacting factors such as the consumption of electrical energy and natural gas.