Displaying items by tag: Romania
Holcim Romania to have new CEO soon
13 November 2015Romania: Holcim Romania will announce its new Chief Executive Officer shortly, as its current CEO, French Francois Petry, was put in charge of Agreggates Industries, LafargeHolcim's operations in the UK, from 1 December 2015.
Petry has run Holcim Romania for almost two years. He took the helm of the company on 1 February 2014, after having run France's Aggregates division since 2008. Holcim Romania runs two cement plants, one grinding plant, 14 concrete stations, three aggregates stations, two special binders stations and one cement terminal. It employs around 800 people.
Holcim Romania to invest Euro32,000 in vocational education
02 November 2015Romania: Holcim Romania is officially launching Holcim Workshops, a programme to support vocational education among pupils. The main beneficiaries of this educational programme are the pupils from grades XI and XII in Alexandru Roman High School in Alesd, as well as the Technical High School in Câmpulung Muscel.
After a pilot module delivered in 2015, the programme will be further developed in 2016 and will include a theoretical component and a practical one, throughout five - six weeks. The pupils selected for the practical module will have the opportunity of a hands-on experience in Holcim plants in Alesd and Campulung, some of the most performing and sustainable cement plants within Holcim Group, based on the results of the Holcim Plant Awards, organised every year by Holcim Group.
"Our intention with Holcim Workshops is to support the pupils from the technical high schools in Holcim communities in Romania to become more familiar with the industrial environment. It is important for them to better discover their abilities and skills through in-depth theoretical and practical sessions delivered by our specialists and to gain confidence in their qualities, so as to become more easily integrated to the labour market. The programme also provides an answer to a real challenge felt on the Romanian market, which is the reduced number of skilled craftsmen, in any field of activity, because the number of vocational schools has diminished," said Mădălina Crăciunescu, Organization and Human Resources Director of Holcim Romania.
Romania: Lafarge's like-for-like cement sales in Romania rose by 25.2% year-on-year in terms of value in the first half of 2015, according to SeeNews. In terms of volume, cement sales in Romania climbed by 30.4% year-on-year in the first six months of 2015. "In Romania, cement volumes rose by 37% in the second quarter of 2015, bolstered by solid trends in the residential and the non-residential segments," said Lafarge in a statement.
Romania: According to Romania-Insider, Germany's HeidelbergCement will merge its three subsidiaries in Romania, Carpatcement Holding, Carpat Beton and Carpat Agregate, to form a single company called HeidelbergCement Romania.
Carpatcement Holding has three cement plants in Romania, whereas Carpat Beton owns 18 concrete stations and Carpat Agregate operates 14 quarries and aggregates exploitations. The internal reorganisation process will end in December 2015. HeidelbergCement has invested Euro500m in Romania to date.
Europe: CRH has been approved by the European Commission as a purchaser of assets in the European Union from Lafarge and Holcim. CRH has also received from the European Commission the clearance for the acquisition of these assets. These divestments remain subject to the completion of the merger between Lafarge and Holcim, including a successful public exchange offering to Lafarge's shareholders and approval by Holcim's shareholders.
In France Holcim and Lafarge are divesting all of Holcim's assets, except for its Altkirch cement plant and aggregates and ready-mix sites in the Haut-Rhin region, and a grinding station of Lafarge in Saint-Nazaire. Lafarge's assets on Reunion island are being sold except for its shareholding in Ciments de Bourbon. All of Lafarge's assets are also being sold in Germany and Romania. Lafarge Tarmac assets in the UK are being sold with the exception of its Cauldon and Cookstown plants and certain associated assets. In Hungary all of Holcim's operating assets are being divested and it is selling its assets in Slovakia.
Europe: Holcim's cement and clinker sales fell by 10.5% in Croatia and by 5.4% in Serbia in 2014. In Croatia, sales prices rose by 0.5%, while in Serbia, they rose by 0.3%. In contrast, Holcim's cement and clinker sales rose by 7.8% in Romania and by 2.4% in Bulgaria. In Romania domestic prices fell by 1.2%, while they rose by 1.1% in Bulgaria.
CRH wins the race to the LafargeHolcim gold
04 February 2015CRH has made good on its intentions. This week it stumped up Euro6.5bn to buy assets from Lafarge and Holcim in four continents. The move follows preparation since at least May 2014 when the Irish building materials group announced a divestment programme. In October 2014 it announced that it would sell its brickwork division.
CRH is finding the cash through a mix of existing cash, debt and equity placing. Interestingly, back in 2012 an Irish stockbroking analyst who was interviewed reckoned that the company could spend up to Euro3.5bn on acquisitions whilst remaining within its banking agreements. Throw in the recent sales and planned divestments and the planned acquisition from LafargeHolcim doesn't seem like too much of a stretch for CRH.
If completed, the purchase will see CRH take on 24 cement plants with a production capacity of 36Mt/yr. As a back of the envelope calculation suggests the sale price of Euro6.5bn isn't far off the occasionally used price of US$200/t for western cement production. The deal also includes aggregates, ready mixed concrete and asphalt assets.
The purchase marks a change in CRH's buying strategy both in terms of scale and distribution. Much of CRH's previous acquisitions have been minority shareholdings that make it difficult to accurately report the company's position in the cement industry. For example, in our Top 100 Report CRH was reported to have a production capacity of 6.49Mt/yr for majority shareholdings with another 19.9Mt/yr for minority shareholdings. The new cement capacity being purchased blows this away because it more than doubles CRH's total capacity and it appears to be all majority owned. CRH thinks that this will propel it to become the world's third biggest building materials manufacturer after LafargeHolcim and Saint-Gobain, leapfrogging Cemex and HeidelbergCement in the process. Strangely there is no mention of the huge Chinese players in the top five manufacturers in CRH's acquisition presentation.
CRH has avoided buying plants in southern Europe but it is relying on the slowly improving growing UK market, where CRH will pick up four plants, to balance the risk. Elsewhere in Europe, the three Holcim plants in France have been suffering from continued low construction rates in that country and the two Lafarge cement plants in Romania are unlikely to have recovered from a production fall in 2013. Outside of Europe growth has been poor in Quebec in 2013 and 2014, where CRH is buying two plants from Holcim. Both Lafarge and Holcim have also seen a slowdown in Brazil. However, the Philippines does seem like a better bet for CRH, with solid cement volumes growth seen by Lafarge in 2013 and the first three quarters of 2014.
With CRH now looking like a company that wants to produce cement rather than one that owns parts of companies that produce cement, all eyes are on the construction markets. 14 of the 24 cement plants CRH are buying are in Europe. Buying at the bottom of a sustained production slump makes sense because the asking price will be low. However, has the bottom been reached yet?
Grand Theft Carbon
08 October 2014It's been an expensive few weeks for Holcim. First, the Venuezuelan state-run outfit Corporación Socialista Del Cemento failed to pay its last instalment of US$97.5m in compensation for its forced nationalisation in 2008. Then the European Court of Justice dismissed Holcim's lawsuit against the European Commission over the theft of 1.6 million emissions allowances in 2010. Here we concentrate on the second story.
Holcim Romania's CO2 accounts held within the Romanian National Registry for Greenhouse Gases were illegally accessed by hackers in November 2010. 1,000,000 CO2 allowances were transferred to an account in Liechtenstein. Another 600,000 CO2 allowances were transferred to a company in Italy, which had account registries in Italy and the UK. Parts were then transferred to accounts in the Czech Republic, the UK and France before being sold on to emissions exchanges in Paris and Amsterdam.
Holcim then tried to sue the Commission, which administers the bloc's electronic emissions trading network, in 2012 for failing to freeze the accounts containing the stolen units, for not returning them and for allowing other companies to turn them in for compliance under the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS). The multinational building materials producer tried to force the commission to pay it Euro17.6m for damages associated with the theft. The amount was equivalent to the 905,000 allowances that remain unaccounted for at a spot price of Euro14.6/unit and an interest rate of 8%.
Other registries were also targeted in early 2011. As much as Euro30m in carbon allowances were stolen at the time, leading to exchanges having to stop trading temporarily.
Although this is a relatively small amount for a multinational company that reported net sales of over Euro16bn in 2013, it feels harsh. If a personal investor had assets stolen from a bank or investment scheme they would expect some sort of compensation.
It should be noted though that it is unclear how the hackers gained entry to Holcim's account details. Successful 'phishing' for account logins via fake emails and the like might suggest lax security on Holcim's side. Or a more conventional hack on the registry server might suggest loose security on the registry's side. Add to this the fact that the price of carbon allowances has fallen since 2010. Reuters estimated that the outstanding allowances would be worth Euro5.1m today.
Hopefully the thefts in late 2010 and early 2011 can be marked down as teething problems. Yet the European Union Emission Trading Scheme is compulsory for 11,000 power stations and manufacturing plants. Any European company that may be less keen on the scheme is unlikely to have its fears settled by high profile cases of carbon credit thefts or the current low price of trading.
Meanwhile, companies and investors involved with China's Guangdong Province carbon emission trading scheme, the world's second biggest such scheme after Europe, may well be watching what happens in Europe closely.
Romania: Holcim is mulling its options after the European Union's (EU) top court dismissed its lawsuit against the European Commission (EC) over the theft of 1.6 million emissions allowances in 2010.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) on 18 Sept 2014 rejected Holcim's arguments that the EC should compensate it for Euro17.6m for damages suffered when the online carbon trading account of its Romanian subsidiary was hacked. In its judgment, the court ruled that Holcim must bear the losses resulting from the thefts and pay the EC's legal costs in the case, which were not disclosed.
"Holcim has taken note of the General Court's judgement," said a Holcim sposewoman. "We are currently analysing the decision in more detail and cannot comment any further."
In November 2010 cyber criminals hacked into Holcim's account at the Romanian emissions trading registry - previously one of around 30 online trading hubs in the EU carbon market - and transferred 1.6 million s-called EU allowances to two accounts at the Italian and Liechtenstein registries. According to EU records, the allowances then passed through registry accounts in the UK, France, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic within hours, before eventually being sold on emissions exchanges in Paris and Amsterdam.
Around 695,000 allowances were later returned to Holcim by various European authorities, but the company's spokeswoman said that the remaining units have still not been recovered.
Holcim sued the EC, which administers the bloc's electronic emissions trading network, in 2012 for failing to freeze the accounts containing the stolen units, for not returning them and for allowing other companies to turn them in for compliance under the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS). The EC refused to reveal the location of the allowances, saying that under EU law the details were confidential and could only be passed to European authorities.
Several European companies including International Power and ScottishPower have since surrendered some of the units to comply with the ETS, but claimed that they bought them in good faith, without knowing that they had been reported stolen.
Holcim had claimed that the EU should pay it the value of any allowances still missing, based on the market price on 16 November 2010 (the day of the theft) plus annual interest of 8%. That amounts to more than Euro17.6m, based on a spot allowance price of Euro14.60/unit.
Holcim has also sued Romania's National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA) over similar claims.
"The court case against NEPA has been suspended by the civil court until the Romanian law enforcement agency (DIICOT) finalises the criminal investigation, but as of now we have no indication as to when this might happen," said Holcim.
Holcim Romania completes Euro6m waste processing plant expansion
11 September 2014Romania: Holcim has completed the extension of its waste co-processing platform in Campulung, Arges County, following a Euro6m investment that was co-funded by the European Union (EU).
The project was implemented throughout 20 months via ecovalor, a Holcim division that specialises in waste management. Of the total Euro6m investment, Euro1.6m came from EU funds under the economic competitiveness programme. Holcim Romania introduced waste co-processing in its cement plants in 2003 and has invested Euro32m in waste processing.