CRH
Reviving a heritage cement name — and building it across an entire industrial company
Following the earlier transformation — CRH’s 2015 arrival in Romania, the Lafarge → CRH localization Brandient also delivered — came the next one. The global group set a policy under which no operating company would trade under the CRH name itself: each business would carry a brand of its own, endorsed simply as a CRH company. For the Romanian cement business, operating in a market contested by global groups, this was a board-level identity decision, not a communication exercise — what should the company be called, and what should it stand for? Brandient was engaged again, this time to find that name and to build the company behind it.
Brandient ran the corporate naming program, and the candidates were put to the sternest jury in the category — the company’s own clients, the builders and merchants who buy cement. Their answer was emphatic: the strongest name was one the company already owned twice over. Romcim was both a heritage name from the origins of the modern Romanian cement industry and, to that day, the portfolio’s most trusted product, the cement Romanian builders had relied on for decades. The client chose to reach back into its own history and raise a product brand to the name of the whole company — giving a globally-owned business a name with a Romanian soul, already proven on the country’s building sites.
A trusted product name, however, is not yet a corporate brand: it carries the equity of the bag, not the stature of a company. And the positioning question was harder still. Romcim could not credibly out-claim the global giants on scale, innovation or sustainability. So Brandient built the positioning on the one territory the company genuinely owned and the larger players could not match: the quality of the relationship — the experience of working with Romcim across the entire life cycle of a project, from product and logistics to the support team behind every order. A positioning at once differentiating and fully sustainable, because it was already true.
On that foundation Brandient built the brand platform: a persona — a doer and a partner — values of trust, togetherness, commitment and a progress-driven spirit, a credible, conversational, direct tone of voice, and a brand idea with the weight of legacy — it matters what you leave behind. A cement company, the idea holds, is measured by what endures: the structures it helps raise, the client relationships it keeps, the leaders, teams and communities it forms. The rebrand itself was framed not as a transition to be managed but as a platform for change — an instrument for aligning strategy, culture and communication behind the new name.
Then came the work of making the name real. In this business a brand exists where the market meets it: the bag on the pallet, the livery on the truck, the sign on the plant gate. Brandient carried Romcim across the company’s entire estate — plants, terminals, fleet, offices and communication, held together by a brand book — and onto the most visible surface of all, the product itself. The bagged ranges were redrawn so the corporate name now signs the builder’s pallet, and the Multibat masonry-and-mortar line was given a full redesign of its own (see `multibat`). In a market where cement is still sold bag by bag, packaging is not collateral; it is the medium.
In May 2021 the change went public: CRH Ciment România became Romcim, a CRH company — the group presenting the move exactly as the strategy had framed it, a strong, trusted local brand backed by the capability of a leading global group. The name has since become the vehicle for growth — new acquisitions in concrete and building materials now trade under Romcim — and the company stands among the leaders of the Romanian building-materials market. A heritage name, given a second life as a corporate brand: confident, client-first, and built, like the structures its cement goes into, to last.
Client:
Romcim (CRH Romania)
Industry:
Manufacturing and Industrial
Project type:
Rebranding — Brand Reconstruction
Date:
2018–2020
Services:
Brand Audit · Brand Positioning · Brand Name, Narratives and Voice · Brand Platform · Brand and Portfolio Architecture · Corporate ID Program · Packaging Design · Communication Design · Branded Environments · Brand Guidelines
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