Cupa Pizarras

Cupa Pizarras is a Spanish producer of natural slate for roofing and cladding, and the slate business of Cupa Group. It has been producing since 1892 and is based in Sobradelo de Valdeorras, in the province of Ourense in Galicia, north-west Spain. Cupa Group describes Cupa Pizarras as the world leader in natural slate.

Group

Cupa Group comprises 79 companies, with subsidiaries in nine countries, about 30 quarries and more than 2,800 employees. It exports to more than 70 countries across five continents; Cupa Pizarras itself cites exports to more than 60 countries. The group also includes a natural stone business, Cupa Stone.

Products

• Roofing slates: natural slates split and cut to size for pitched roofs.
• READYSLATE: a pre-assembled, lightweight natural slate roofing system intended to speed up installation.
• CUPACLAD: a ventilated rainscreen facade system using natural slate.

Natural slate roofing

Roofing slate is a fine-grained metamorphic rock that can be split into thin, durable sheets, which are fixed with hooks or nails over battens. Quality is assessed against product standards such as EN 12326 in Europe and ASTM C406 in North America, which cover properties including water absorption, freeze-thaw resistance and the presence of oxidisable minerals.

Installation

In Spain and France slates are commonly fixed with stainless-steel hooks, while in the UK and Ireland nailing is traditional. Each slate overlaps the course two rows below it, a pattern known as double-lap roofing, so that water running off one slate is always shed onto another.