Global Cement News

US: Douglas C Rauh has resigned as the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Summit Materials with effect from 30 December 2017. Tom Hill, the company’s President and Chief Executive Officer, will act as Interim Chief Operating Officer while the building materials company searches for a replacement. During the recruitment period, the three Executive Vice Presidents of the company’s operating segments Tom Beck (Cement Segment), Shane Evans (West Segment) and Damian Murphy (East Segment) will report directly to Hill.

Ivory Coast: Xavier Saint-Martin-Tillet, the chief executive officer of LafargeHolcim Côte d'Ivoire has been appointed as the head of the Association of Cement Producers of Cote d'Ivoire (APCCI). His term will last two years, according to Financial Afrik. He will be assisted by Soro Nagolo, deputy general manager of the Société des Ciments d'Abidjan (SCA), who will serve as the vice-president of the association.

Saint-Martin-Tillet is a graduate of the École Centrale Paris in France. He spent 20 years working for Lafarge before joining LafargeHolcim Côte d'Ivoire in October 2016 as its managing director.

The last week marked a step change to the US industry with the news that Ireland’s CRH has agreed to buy Ash Grove Cement. The latter is the largest remaining cement producer still owned by an American company. Its history dates back 135 years to its founding in 1882, with links to the Sunderland family for over a century. Following the acquisition, each of the top five cement producing firms in the US will be operated by multinational corporations based in foreign countries.

Although this scenario is not new to many other countries around the world, it is rare for a nation with a cement industry of this scale. The US is the third biggest cement producer worldwide. Out of the top ten cement producing nations Global Cement Magazine identified in its Top 100 Report 2017 feature in December 2016 only Egypt doesn’t have a local company to match the multinationals. China has China National Building Material (CNBM), for example and India has UltraTech cement and so on and so forth.

The actual sale covers Ash Grove Cement’s eight cement plants and 23 cement terminals, as well as its ready mix concrete and aggregate businesses, for US$3.5bn. Altogether its cement plants have a production capacity of 9.5Mt/yr and this really puts into contrast the Cementir Italia deal last week. HeidelbergCement has agreed to buy that company for around Euro57/t. CRH is buying Ash Grove Cement for US$368/t. That’s more that five times as much!

To be fair they are very different markets, with Italy’s cement sector consolidating near the bottom of a business cycle and the US growing with some promise. For comparison with other recent US acquisitions, CRH is offering to pay about the same as Summit Materials did to Lafarge for a cement plant and seven terminals in mid-2015. Other than that a few of the more recent transactions have been between US$200 – 300/t. The gradual price inflation for cement production capacity indicates that there is confidence in the US cement market.

In terms of CRH’s enhanced presence in North America following the completion of the deal, it currently operates two cement plants in the US: the American Cement Sumterville plant in Florida, a joint venture with Elementia, and the Trident plant in Montana. The CRH US division also runs five terminals in the Midwest and Northeast. This compliments Ash Grove Cement’s presence in the West, Midwest and South. Throw in CRH’s Canadian cement plants in Ontario and Quebec and CRH has the makings of a seriously strong cement business in North America. The only obvious impediment could be the close proximity of the CRH Trident plant and the Ash Grove Cement Montana City plant. Both are in Montana within 115km of each other and they are the only integrated plants in the state. A Federal Trade Commission arranged divestment in this location seems likely.

Ash Grove Cement’s chairman Charlie Sunderland, described CRH as his company’s biggest customer when the acquisition was announced. Buying Ash Grove Cement fills in one more piece in CRH’s construction materials puzzle in North America. Its American divisions have generated more than half of its revenue since at least 2014 dominating asphalt, aggregate and ready mix concrete markets. Yet it has lacked a cement market presence to match this. This changes when the deal with Ash Grove Cement completes.

Indonesia: Hendi Prio Santoso has been appointed as the president director of Semen Indonesia following his approval at a shareholders meeting. He succeeds Rizkan Chandra, who died in July 2017. Santoso is the former president director of state-owned gas company Perusahaan Gas Negara (PGN).

Morocco: Hakan Gürdal has been appointed as the managing director of Ciments du Maroc, a subsidiary of HeidelbergCement. He succeeds Nabil Francis, according to the Telquel newspaper.

Hakan Gürdal graduated from the Technical University of Yildiz in Istanbul in Mechanical Engineering and from the University of Istanbul with a MBA in International Management. He then joined Çanakkale Çimento in 1992. He became a member of the board of directors of HeidelbergCement in 2016 and has been in charge of the Africa-Eastern Mediterranean region since then. He has been responsible for Purchasing since the start of 2017.