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Unsurprisingly the European Commission blocked Duna-Dráva Cement’s (DDC) attempted purchase of Cemex Croatia this week. Merging the country’s biggest cement producer with its largest importer was going to be a challenge for the commission. Whereas in previous transactions the various parties offered business disposals to ease the commission’s concerns, here all they were got was access to a cement terminal in Metković in southern Croatia. And this facility on the Neretva river is currently being leased by Cemex! Clearly this didn’t give the impression of being a long term solution.

Compare this with the merger between Lafarge and Holcim in 2015 where multiple sales were proposed to make sure the deal went through. Or look at the acquisition of Italcementi by HeidelbergCement in 2016 where the parties sold Italcementi’s Belgian subsidiary Compagnie des Ciments Belges to Cementir to make the deal happen. In comparison to these deals the attempt by HeidelbergCement and Schwenk, through their subsidiary DDC, comes across as a calculated gamble designed to test the resolve of the commission. If the commission had somehow passed the proposed acquisition then the companies would have cornered the market. If it turned it down, as it has, then nothing would be lost other than putting together the bid. HeidelbergCement had its mind on bigger things as it bought and then integrated Italcementi.

Commissioner Margrethe Vestager summed up the mood of the commission: “For mergers between direct competitors, we generally have a preference for a clean, structural solution, such as selling a production plant. HeidelbergCement and Schwenk decided not to offer that. Instead they proposed to give a competitor access to a cement terminal in southern Croatia. Essentially, this amounted to giving a competitor access to a storage facility – without existing customers or established access to cement, without brands and without sales or managerial staff.”

Elsewhere, the other big story in the industry news this week was Votorantim’s decision to focus on the lime business in Brazil by adding lime units to some of its existing cement plants. Given the dire state of the local cement and construction industry, initiatives to break the deadlock have been expected. The alternative is plant closures and divestures, such as the ongoing talks by Camargo Corrêa to sell the other big local producer, InterCement. Votorantim plans to build lime units attached to the cement plants at Nobres in Mato Grosso, Xambioa in Tocantins, Primavera in Pará and Idealiza in Goiás. Unfortunately the agricultural areas of the country and ones with cement plants don’t overlay neatly. Cement production is mainly focused in the south-eastern states and Votorantim are targeting the Cerrado, in the centre of the country, for the lime business.

The scale of the project, at US$50m, the scale of the lime business generally and the addition of lime units at cement plants suggest that the pivot to lime can only be a sideline to cement and construction. Given the similarity of the cement and lime production processes the announcement would be much more significant were Votorantim set to convert clinker kilns into lime ones. A notable example of this was at Cement Australia’s Gladstone plant in Queensland, Australia. Here a mothballed FCB-Ciment clinker kiln was converted into a lime kiln in the early 2000s. At the time the cost of the conversion project was valued at just under US$20m. If Votorantim was seriously thinking of doing this at a few of their underperforming cement plants then one would expect the bill to be higher than US$50m. However, it’s early days yet.

Switzerland: The board of directors of LafargeHolcim will nominate Patrick Kron for election as a new board member at the group’s upcoming Annual General Meeting on 3 May 2017. At the same time Philippe Dauman and Alexander Gut have taken the decision not to stand for re-election. Bruno Lafont, currently co-chairman of the board of directors, has also stated previously that he will not stand for re-election. Following the election of the nominees, the board of directors will reduce in size to 12 members from 14 at present.

Kron, a French national who was born in 1953, is a graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique and the Paris Ecole des Mines, France. He began his career at the French Industry Ministry in 1979 before joining the Pechiney group in 1984. In 1993, he became member of the executive committee of the Pechiney group and was chairman and chief executive officer of Carbone Lorraine from 1993 to 1997. From 1995 to 1997, he ran Pechiney’s Food and Health Care Packaging Sector and held the position of chief operating officer of the American National Can Company in Chicago, US. From 1998 to 2002, Kron was chairman of the executive board of Imerys. He has been a director of Alstom since July 2001 and he was appointed chief executive officer of Alstom in January 2003, and then chairman and chief executive officer in March 2003, a position he held until January 2016 when he set up Patrick Kron - Conseils & Investissements.

Mexico: Mauricio Doehmer has been appointed as the president of the National Chamber of Cement. He is Cemex’s corporate affairs and business risk management executive vice-president, according to the El Financiero newspaper. He succeeds Billy Alvarez, an executive with Cementos Cruz Azul.

Ireland: Ecocem Ireland has appointed Micheál McKittrick as its Managing Director for Ireland and the UK. His role involves the management of all aspects of the Irish and UK operations. McKittrick is a Chartered Engineer and graduate of Trinity College Dublin. He previously worked in several senior roles with Atkins Consulting Engineers.