No modern industrial production can do without refractory materials – whether concrete mixes, masses, or shaped products – capable of withstanding extremely high temperatures. They are used by metallurgical, cement, and glass companies to ensure the continuous operation of furnaces and high-temperature processes. According to Coherent Market Insights, the global refractory materials market is expected to exceed $35 billion by 2025.
Despite the scale of the industry, there has never been a universal information hub for its community of manufacturers, buyers, engineers, researchers, and logistics operators – a space to share knowledge, track technological changes, publish case studies, or find partners. To fill this gap, entrepreneur Andrii Abrosymov launched Fobberg Media, a platform designed to serve as an ecosystem for the industry. In an interview with Forbes BrandVoice, Andrii Abrosymov discussed the platform’s concept and its key tools.
About Andrii Abrosymov
Andrii Abrosymov is an entrepreneur from Dnipro and the founder of an international business in the refractory materials industry. He began his career in a family company, progressing from sales manager to CEO.
In 2015, he founded Refrathermica Ceramics in Zaporizhzhia, focusing on the production of refractory concrete mixes, masses, and shaped products. Since 2018, the company has pursued an international strategy, producing refractory materials at plants in five countries: Ukraine, the United States, Poland, India, and China.
Why did you decide to launch a media platform?
I saw a clear need for a hub that could bring together the dispersed segments of the industry. Today, information is scattered – it’s available at trade shows, in specialized magazines, or across niche marketplaces. As a result, each player operates in their own ʼinformation bubble,ʼ with limited opportunities to share knowledge or find partners quickly.
That’s why I decided to create a platform that combines news, analysis, educational content, and professional networking and eventually, digital commerce. It will be a combination of an industry media outlet, an analytical center, a professional social network, and a B2B hub – a comprehensive solution for the entire industry that facilitates connections, knowledge exchange, and market growth.
The primary objective is to establish Fobberg Media as the single point of entry into the world of refractory materials, featuring live content, verified products, genuine individuals, and open interaction.
We are creating a space where people can share knowledge, track technological changes, publish case studies, or find partners.
What tools does Fobberg Media offer for industry participants?
The first is an information feed. Every day, we cover key events in the world of refractory materials, raw materials, thermal insulation, metallurgy, logistics, and geopolitics. This includes both short news updates and in-depth analytical reviews based on professional sources from North America, Europe, and Asia. All content is published in English.
The second is analytics, designed for procurement specialists, traders, technical & financial managers, and R&D departments. This includes reports, digests, price reviews, and other market insights.
The third tool is the Fobberg Reviews YouTube channel. Here, we showcase material tests and provide practical tips on installation, use, and storage of refractory solutions. The ʼDIYʼ format makes the content accessible both to engineers and individual users.
The fourth is a dedicated community platform (currently under development). Companies will be able to create their own profiles, publish products, share case studies, comment on news, and search for partners and clients. Future versions will include tenders, additional trading tools, and specialized catalogs.
You use the name Andrew Fobberg. Why that choice?
At the international level, I go by Andrew Fobberg, which for me symbolizes trust, openness, and recognizability. It’s my public pseudonym, derived from my maternal family name. I consciously chose it as part of the brand: it sounds universal, is easy to remember in the US, Europe, and Asia, while still preserving a personal connection to my family history.
How do you see the platform evolving over the next two to three years?
Fobberg Media’s goal is to become the leading independent platform for the global refractory industry. We aim not just to ʼreport the news,ʼ but to create an infrastructure for communication, decision-making, knowledge access, and commercial interaction in an industry that has long been fragmented and low-profile.
In the near term, our objectives include launching news and analytics tailored to North America, Europe, and Asia; expanding the analytics section; creating a closed professional community; building a full-fledged marketplace with verified products, contacts, and technical documentation; and, most importantly, establishing an open reputational ecosystem where industry players know and trust one another.
What services are currently available to users of the platform?
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a pizza oven owner, a farmer lining a boiler, or the chief engineer of a blast furnace at a steel plant – on our platform, you can explore offerings from verified suppliers, get technical advice, analyze prices, and even conclude deals directly on the platform.
Additionally, we see Fobberg Media as an educational hub for the global refractory industry. Most of the things we use every day – steel, glass, plastics, paper, food packaging, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers pass through production processes that rely on refractory materials. In both direct and indirect production chains, these materials ensure thermal safety, efficiency, and process stability.
We aim to give a voice to an industry that has long remained silent.
Fobberg Media is the pulse and the voice of the global refractory sector.
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