Displaying items by tag: Acquisition

We round off 2025 with the news that Holcim is preparing to buy a majority stake in Cementos Pacasmayo. This has implications for both the future of Holcim and the cement market in Peru. We explore this and more below.

This proposed acquisition starts to answer the question of what kind of company Holcim wants to be following the spin-off of Amrize, the North American business, in June 2025. The remainder of Holcim after the split consists of a large European segment and smaller divisions in Latin America and Asia, Middle East & Africa (AMEA). After the divestment of Lafarge Africa in Nigeria, the AMEA business now mainly covers North Africa, the Middle East, Australia, Bangladesh, China, New Zealand and the Philippines. In Latin America the group has subsidiaries in many countries, from Mexico south to Argentina. It also operates the Disensa construction materials retail chain. Holcim’s NextGen Growth 2030 strategy is targeted at sustainability and growth in AMEA and Latin America. The size of the business in Europe dictates the need for sustainability but the growth potential is elsewhere. Hence the attractiveness of deals like the one in Peru.

The acquisition of Cementos Pacasmayo follows a string of deals for Holcim in the country. Holcim purchased ready-mix concrete producer Mixercon and industrial minerals producer Comacsa for US$100m in mid-2024. Then in April 2025 it bought specialty buildings products manufacturer Compañía Minera Luren. The proposed Cementos Pacasmayo deal builds on all of this. Holcim has agreed to spend US$1.5bn to buy a 50.01% share. Completion of the transaction is expected in the first half of 2026 once regulatory approval is obtained. It will give Holcim control of Cementos Pacasmayo’s three integrated cement plants with a combined production capacity of 4.9Mt/yr, 28 ready-mix and precast concrete plants and 300 of the company’s DINO retail stores. Notably, Holcim appears to be paying around US$610/t for the new capacity. This is comparable to recent deals in North America.

The Holcim deal marks a change to the dominance of the cement market in Peru by local players. Previously, all the integrated clinker producers - UNACEM, Cementos Pacasmayo, Grupo Gloria and Cementos Inka - were owned by Peruvian companies. This started to change in 2024 when Holcim bought Comacsa and its white cement plant in Lima. Coincidentally, a US$17.5m fine imposed upon Grupo Gloria by National Institute for the Defence of Free Competition and the Protection of Intellectual Property (Indecopi) for anticompetitive behaviour was confirmed this week. The penalty was originally announced in 2023 in response to the alleged enforcement of exclusive supply contracts and restricted access to Cemento Yura plants. The subsidiary of Grupo Gloria continues to oppose the ruling.

Graph 1: Cement despatches in Peru, 2016 - 2015. Source: Asociación de Productores de Cemento (ASOCEM). Note: Figure estimated for 2025.

Data for November 2025 from Asociación de Productores de Cemento (ASOCEM) shows that despatches grew by 5.9% year-on-year from December 2024 to November 2025. Both imports and exports of cement and clinker are also up. Similarly, Cementos Pacasmayo has reported a good year so far in 2025. Its sales grew by 7% year-on-year to US$462m and its consolidated earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) by 4.6% to US$121m in the first nine months of 2025. This was attributed to higher sales for infrastructure-related projects and an increase in bagged cement demand.

The cement market in Peru has bounced back strongly following the Covid-19 epidemic. There was a dip in 2023 and 2024 but the market stayed at higher levels than the late 2010s despite this. Further growth has now returned and more is expected in the future. This may explain why Holcim has agreed to pay serious money to buy a cement company in Peru. As the business in Europe adapts to sustainability it is looking to expand elsewhere. Latin America is the obvious candidate to build on the existing business. Locally in Peru, this deal will change the status quo and it will be fascinating to observe how the market evolves in coming years.

Global Cement Weekly will return on Wednesday 7 January 2026

Peru: Holcim has announced plans to acquire a majority stake in Cementos Pacasmayo, expanding its footprint in the country and strengthening its position across Latin America. Holcim will acquire 50.01% of the company for US$550m, according to Reuters. Cementos Pacasmayo operates three cement plants with a total capacity of approximately 5Mt/yr, along with 28 ready-mix and precast concrete plants. The deal values the company at US$1.5bn.

The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals and standard closing conditions. The acquisition follows Holcim’s initial entry into the Peruvian market in 2024.

Türkiye: Titan has signed a share purchase agreement to acquire 100% of Traçim Çimento, which operates a 2.5Mt/yr integrated cement plant near Istanbul. The plant supplies the local market and can export to neighbouring countries and the US. A joint solar power project with the sellers is also planned.

The deal strengthens Titan’s operations in western Türkiye, where it already owns a grinding plant and pozzolana quarry in the Marmara region. It also complements the group’s export network to the US. The purchase price is approximately US$190m. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals.

Europe: Holcim has completed the acquisitions of Thames Materials in London and of a majority stake in A&S Recycling in Hanover, and agreed to acquire a third demolition materials recycler in France. The three firms have a combined processing capacity of around 1.3Mt/yr. The acquisitions will support Holcim’s NextGen Growth 2030 target of recycling over 20Mt/yr of construction demolition materials and scale up its ECOCycle circular construction technology.

With Thames Materials, Holcim can now provide circular services across Greater London. The three A&S Recycling sites in Hanover raise Holcim’s German recycling hubs to 10, and the upcoming acquisition in Northwest France will increase Holcim’s French recycling centres to 28.

US: Heidelberg Materials has announced that it will acquire Walan Specialty Construction Products in Delaware under a binding purchase agreement. The transaction includes a 150,000t/yr capacity slag grinding plant with a vertical mill built in 2022 near the Port of Wilmington. The producer says that this acquisition will further strengthen its low-carbon cementitious portfolio and extend its market reach in the Northeast Region.

Pakistan: Maple Leaf Cement has announced a potential acquisition of Pioneer Cement, which, if realised, would elevate it to being the second-largest cement producer in the north of Pakistan, raising its capacity from 8Mt/yr to 13Mt/yr.

Maple Leaf Cement and its subsidiary Maple Leaf Capital jointly hold an 18.6% stake in Pioneer Cement, while Habibullah Group owns ~58%. The remaining 23.4% is owned by small private investors.

France: Titan Group has entered into exclusive negotiations to acquire Vracs de L’Estuaire, which operates a grinding plant at the port of Le Havre in northern France. The acquisition would strengthen Titan’s presence in the French market, building on its existing operations in Marseille. The transaction remains subject to customary legal procedures and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2026.

The FLSmidth Cement divestment story took a historic turn this week with the renaming of the company to Fuller Technologies. The sale of the company to private equity firm Pacific Avenue Capital Partners completed on 31 October 2025. Pacific Avenue then publicly rebranded the firm a few days later in early November 2025.

FLSmidth Cement was sold as a complete operating business with all the intellectual property (IP), technology, employees, manufacturing facilities, sales and service organisations included. For more on this read Global Cement Weekly #716. The decision to change the name to Fuller Technologies harks back to the history of FLSmidth and related companies. Pennsylvania-based Fuller Company dates back to the mid-19th Century with the formation of the McKee-Fuller Foundry Company. Fuller Company later emerged in the 1920s when it started selling the Fuller-Kinyon pump, a pneumatic screw pump that simplified the handling of pulverised materials. This product went on to become well known for cement conveying. In 1959 Fuller acquired Traylor Engineering. It was then later acquired by FLSmidth in 1990.

What is interesting here is that Pacific Avenue has chosen to emphasise the US industrial heritage of its acquisition. Looking at the numbers last year offers one answer as to why. Purely in economic terms FLSmidth Cement’s revenue share broke down as follows in 2024: US - 24%; Denmark - 14%; India - 11%; Indonesia - 9%; Brazil - 8%; Türkiye - 7%; and China - 7%. The remainder came from export sales elsewhere.

Both Fuller and FLSmidth are well known brands in the cement sector though. One is American and the other is European. Focusing on the US brand name is a canny move given the increasing dominance of China-based equipment suppliers to the global cement market from the 2010s onwards. One of the few markets that the Chinese equipment suppliers have not made inroads into is the US. Whilst they may have supplied smaller pieces of equipment, major orders have remained the preserve of western companies. Or at least publicly they have. Partly this is because few new lines have been built recently. Yet, the three new clinker production lines in the US in recent years - Heidelberg Materials’ plant in Mitchell, Indiana, National Cement’s plant in Ragland, Alabama and GCC’s plant at Odessa, Texas - had major equipment supplied by either thyssenkrupp or KHD. Both companies are German, although KHD is majority-owned by a Chinese entity.

Western cement multinationals have focused on the US as they have retreated from the east. Key examples of this include CRH’s acquisition of Ash Grove in 2018 and the spin-off of Amrize by Holcim in 2025. Trade protectionism has then crept in under the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 and the more overt tariffs introduced by the Trump administration in 2025. The US cement market is the third largest in the world and the fundamentals for the local construction materials market look good in the medium term. With carbon taxes in the US looking like a distant prospect, it’s a fair bet that more clinker production lines are likely to be required before too long. Protectionism and demand suggest that an equipment supplier to the cement sector with a historically American sounding name and long US-roots might just have an edge. Manufacturing facilities based in the US could also help reduce the cost of tariffs too.

Of course, given that Pacific Avenue is a private equity firm, it may be preparing for a future carve-out or other forms of financial engineering by building up the perceived value of its asset. Or maybe somebody at Pacific Avenue (or elsewhere) simply likes their American industrial history!

Anyway, welcome back to Fuller Technologies and best of luck. And, lest anyone forget, it remains a multinational company with offices in Europe, India, China, Brazil, Thailand, the UAE… and the US.

Pakistan: The Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP) has approved the acquisition of Denmark-based FLSmidth’s global cement business by Pacific Avenue Capital Partners Management Company subsidiary ApS as it affects the Pakistani market. Local press has reported that the parties concluded a global share purchase agreement earlier in 2025.

FLSmidth subsidiary FLSmidth (Private) holds a non-dominant share across various cement technologies and services market sub-segments in Pakistan, while ApS has no current operational presence. The CCP’s Phase 1 investigation concluded that the transaction does not result in horizontal or vertical overlaps, raise competition concerns, create entry barriers or enhance the market power of FLSmidth (Private).

India: Aditya Birla Group subsidiary UltraTech Cement’s revenues grew by 21% year-on-year to US$2.33bn in the second quarter of the 2026 financial year. ET Now News has reported that the producer’s profit was US$148m, up by 75% year-on-year. During the quarter, UltraTech Cement’s costs rose by US$2.28/t, contributing towards a 45% quarter-on-quarter drop in its net profit.

In the 2026 financial year to-date, UltraTech Cement acquired a 76% stake in fellow producer The India Cements and acquired putty producer Birla White Wallcare outright.