Displaying items by tag: Slovenia

Slovenia: Swiss-based LafargeHolcim’s Slovenian subsidiary Lafarge Slovenia has submitted an application for an environmental permit for its 0.5Mt/yr Cementarna Trbovlje grinding plant. Business News Europe has reported that the company hopes to resume grinding, storage and dispatch at the facility, which went out of operation after losing its environmental permit in late 2014. “The plant will no longer produce raw materials itself, but source them from elsewhere, along with other cement additives,” said operations manager Čeprav Delo.

Austria: Alpacem has appointed Birgit Lautner as its head of human resources and Jerneja Potocnik as the head of its financial control. Lautner, aged 47 years, worked in various international finance and industrial companies in human resource roles before joining Alpacem. Potocnik, aged 41 years, will also act as finance director for Salonit Anhovo, the group’s Slovenian subsidiary. She has held various positions in the Wietersdorfer Group since 2016.

Italy: Austria’s Alpacem purchased a terminal and bagging plant at Trieste in Italy from Italcementi in April 2019 for an undisclosed sum. The unit will be run by the company’s Slovenian Salonit Anhovo subsidiary with support from its Italian subsidiary W&P Cementi. Cement processed at the terminal will be delivered from the Salonit Anhovo integrated plant in Slovenia for sale in Slovenia, Italy and Croatia.

US/Europe: US refractory manufacturer Plibrico has entered into a distribution partnership with the Pli Group Europe, a refractory distributor contractor based in Vienna, Austria. Under the new alliance, Pli Group Europe will provide full-service distribution of Plibrico’s Plico brand refractories in Austria, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Bulgaria, with immediate effect.

“Adding Pli Group Europe to our ranks of Pli Partners allows Plibrico to reinforce its expertise, enhance its service offering and strengthen the value chain offered to customers throughout Europe,” said Brad Taylor, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Plibrico.

Slovenia: Salonit Anhovo has spent Euro10m towards upgrades at its Anhovo cement plant. Most of the funding went towards automation and environmental works, according to the Slovenian Press Agency. The unit built new cement silos, set up devices to reduce NO_x emissions, purchased new machinery for its quarry, reduced noise levels and upgraded its business information system. The company has also started to replace asbestos roofing on an old building and started demolishing disused buildings. These two last projects are valued at around Euro3m and are expected to be completed by the end of 2020.

Slovenia: LafargeHolcim has lost a legal battle for an environmental permit at its Trbovlje cement plant. The cement producer appealed against a decision by the Environment Agency to decline to issue its consent to the company in May 2016, according to the Slovenian Press Agency. The company has been attempting to increase its cement production capacity to 1250t/day by using petcoke as a fuel.

CRH 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?