15 December 2014
Graymont to buy Holcim’s McDonalds Lime for an undisclosed sum 15 December 2014
Canada/New Zealand: Canadian lime company Graymont has agreed to buy McDonalds Lime from Holcim New Zealand and Bluescope Steel, owned New Zealand Steel, for an undisclosed sum. The McDonald's sale is subject to regulatory approvals and should be completed in 2015.
Holcim plans to close its Westport cement plant in 2016 and will also sell its Taylor's Lime assets to Graymont. McDonalds Lime is 72% owned by Holcim New Zealand, with the remainder owned by New Zealand Steel. It has the country's largest lime quarry at Oparure, north of Te Kuiti.
Graymont is North America's second-largest supplier of lime and lime-based products and also has an investment in Grupo Calidra, Mexico's largest lime producer. This is the Canadian company's first investment in the New Zealand market.
Holcim has been trying to sell the lime business, which it no longer considers a core business, as it plans for imported cement to replace local production at Westport. It wrote down the value of its Westport cement plant ahead of the coming closure, booking US$24.1m of charges for the plant. The plant will close by the second half of 2016 when new US$77.6m import facilities at Waitemata in Auckland and Timaru are fully operational. Plans for a new cement manufacturing plant at Weston in North Otago remain on hold, but Holcim is keeping the assets so it has the option of 'eventually building a new cement plant.'
India: The government has asked Coal India Ltd (CIL) to stay away from the initial rounds of coal block auctions due in January 2015 that are meant for the cement, power and steel industries. The state-run monopoly miner has, however, requested the government to reallocate a few blocks to it, including two that it had lost that were being jointly developed with private firms.
"We are a commercial producer of coal and we do not fit into the category for which the blocks are being auctioned," said a senior CIL official. "CIL will stay away from the first rounds of auctions." However, CIL is likely to participate in bidding when coal blocks are auctioned for commercial mining.
The company has requested that the government return the blocks that it lost following the Supreme Court's order rendering almost all allotments illegal 'because substantial investment has already been made by all parties in these blocks.' CIL had floated majority joint ventures with two private companies to undertake mining projects in those two blocks.