
Displaying items by tag: Acquisition
India: Chettinad Cement Corporation Ltd (CCCL) has recently purchased 20.58% of the shares of Anjani Portland Cement Ltd from shareholders for a price of US$1.03/share. CCCL announced its plans to acquire Anjani Portland Cement in March 2014. The purchase forms part of the company's strategy to increase its presence in the Andhra Pradesh market. Anjani Portland operates two plants in the Nalgonda district, Andhra Pradesh, with a production capacity of 1.2Mt/yr and plans are also in place for the construction of a greenfield cement plant in Karnataka.
India: Sagar Cements plans to sell its 47% stake in the joint venture company Vicat Sagar Cement to Vicat Group. Sagar Cement's board will consider the sale of its investment in the plant located at Chatrasal, Karnataka, at a meeting on 15 July 2014. Sagar Cements had invested US$14.3m in the first phase of the plant with 2.75Mt/yr capacity. Commercial production commenced in January 2013. France's Vicat is willing to acquire the stake to make Vicat Sagar Cement a completely-owned entity. Vicat is hoping to complete the entire transaction by September 2014.
France: Italcementi has reached the ownership threshold allowing for a squeeze-out of its French arm Ciments Français SA after a share purchase. With the latest acquisition of some 1.2m shares of Ciments Français, Italcementi has surpassed 95% of the share capital of the unit, while it had already secured 95% of the voting rights of the company in June 2014.
Italcementi's buyout bid for Ciments Français, which commenced on 13 June 2014, is worth Euro79.50/share, excluding dividend. Italcementi unveiled the final price of the offer for Ciments Français on 20 May 2014. It said at the time that it held 83.83% of the share capital and 91.03% of the voting rights of the unit and that its bid had a maximum total counter-value of some Euro464m.
Italcementi announced that it would initiate a squeeze-out procedure for the rest of the shares of Ciments Français at the offer price within three months from the completion of the bid. The move would be followed by the delisting of Ciments Français from NYSE-Euronext Paris.
Update: Italcementi has announced that the squeeze-out procedure for its French arm, Ciments Français, will commence on 15 July 2014 at a price of Euro79.50/share (net of all costs).
Currently Italcementi holds 97.73% of the share capital and 98.65% of the voting rights of Ciments Français and it intends to purchase the remaining 2.27% stake from minority shareholders. As agreed with the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) and in accordance with market practices, trading of Ciments Français shares have been suspended.
Huaxin Cement invests in Cambodia Cement
18 June 2014Cambodia/China: Huaxin Cement has injected US$24m into Cambodia Cement Chakrey Ting Factory to acquire a 40% stake in the southeast Asia-based company on 17 June 2014. After the investment, the Cambodia cement producer's registered capital grew to US$60m from US$32m. The Hubei Province-based cement manufacturer said that the acquisition in Cambodia is the company's second overseas investment after establishing a subsidiary in Tajikistan in 2011.
Italcementi launches Ciments Français buyout offer
13 June 2014France: Italcementi has announced that it will target the minority holdings of Ciments Français with a buyout bid of Euro79.5/share, excluding dividend, from 13 June - 3 July 2014. The announcement follows the receipt of regulatory clearance.
Italcementi unveiled the final offer price on 20 May 2014. The company said at the time that it held 83.83% of the share capital and 91.03% of the voting rights of Ciments Français and that its bid had a maximum total counter-value of some Euro464m.
The move is in line with a drive to increase Italcementi's capital and streamline the group's structure. It will use the proceeds from a capital hike of up to Euro500m to bankroll the recommended offer. In the event that Italcementi builds a stake of at least 95% through the tender offer, it would initiate, within three months from the completion of the bid, a squeeze-out procedure for the rest of the shares at the offer price.
India: UltraTech Cement has received the approval of the Bombay and Ahmedabad High Courts to acquire Jaypee Cement's plant in Gujarat.
UltraTech has already received the approval of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), shareholders and creditors to buy the 4.8Mt/yr cement plant with a 57.5MW coal-fired thermal power plant, limestone reserves for over 90 years and a captive jetty at Sewagram, Maharashtra State, for US$639m. As part of the deal, UltraTech will absorb a debt of US$614m of Jaypee Cement and issue UltraTech shares worth US$25.2m to Jaypee Associates.
Mika Cement plant has a potential buyer
12 June 2014Armenia: Mikhail Baghdasarov's Mika Cement plant was declared bankrupt in June 2013 and was mortgaged for a loan from VTB Armenia Bank in early 2014, according to local media.
New media reports claim that Russia-based Armenian businessmen are now interested in buying the plant. The head of the plant's technical department, Serob Sharoyan, is their representative in Armenia. It is rumoured that Sharoyan will be appointed as director of Mika Cement.
VTB Armenia Bank neither confirmed nor refuted the information about the plant sale.
Yara acquires STRABAG’s flue gas cleaning division
04 June 2014Norway/Austria: Yara International intends to acquire the flue gas cleaning division of STRABAG SE, in a move that consolidates Yara's position as a global, full-service emissions-to-air control company. STRABAG stated that it is selling its flue gas cleaning division in order to focus on its core construction business.
"Our acquisition of STRABAG's flue gas cleaning division will increase our capacities in, and beyond, NOx control systems. It will also give us access to great teams in key growth markets like Asia and Eastern Europe, where we can help customers meet increasingly stringent environmental regulations," said Yves Bonte, Senior Vice-President and head of Yara's Industrial Segment.
With flue gas cleaning, Yara can provide an end-to-end service that includes the production of Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) and Selective Non-Catalytic Reduction (SNCR) systems to reduce Nitrogen Oxide (NOx) emissions, along with the reagents needed to operate them.
The STRABAG acquisition is part of Yara's broader strategic direction to invest in products and services that address the related issues of environment, resources and food security. In January 2014 Yara acquired H+H Umwelt-und-Industrietechnik GmbH, which primarily produces SCR systems to reduce Nitrogen Oxide (NOx) emissions on ships. In April 2014 Yara also took a majority stake in Green Tech Marine, a leading Sulphur Oxide (SOx) scrubber supplier to the marine industry.
The transaction is subject to approval by the Austrian competition authority and other regulatory approvals. It is expected to be completed by the end of August 2014.
Turkey: The Oyak Group, which has various cement interests Turkey, is looking into acquisition opportunities in the cement sector. It is focusing on Europe (specifically the UK) and Africa, according to its cement group chairman Celalettin Caglar.
Caglar said that the group was also interested in acquisition opportunities that could arise from the merger of Holcim of Switzerland and France's Lafarge.
Lafarge has said two-thirds of divestments as a result of the deal with Holcim are expected to affect Western Europe, but there are also overlapping operations in India, China, Canada and Brazil.
French Guiana: Colombia's Cementos Argos has signed an agreement with the French multinational cement giant Lafarge to acquire assets in French Guiana for Euro50m. The purchase is coherent with Cementos Argos' objective of consolidating its operational and logistical cement network and with its expansion strategy, which has recently incorporated assets in the United States and Honduras.
Subject to approvals, Cementos Argos has acquired 100% of the company Ciments Guyanais, which is owned equally by France's Lafarge and Switzerland's Holcim. As such the announced deal represents the first sale of Lafarge, Holcim or Lafarge-Holcim joint venture cement assets since the announcement of the intended mega-merger between Lafarge and Holcim to form LafargeHolcim. The assets included in the purchase are a 0.2Mt/yr clinker grinding station and a port, both located in Dégrad des Cannes, close to the capital, Cayenne. They generate earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of approximately Euro8.1m/yr.
"This new acquisition in French Guiana nicely complements our current network of assets in the region, especially given its proximity to our grinding facilities in Suriname and our cement terminals in the Antilles," said Jorge Mario Velásquez, CEO of Cementos Argos. "This overseas department of France has cement consumption per capita of 433kg/capita/yr, which is almost twice as much as the average in Latin America. Also, the assets are well aligned with the operations that were recently acquired in the United States and our assets in the Caribbean and Colombia."
The transaction is subject to the usual regulatory procedures.