Lafarge buys leading Indian concrete producer
Lafarge is paying EUR226m to acquire L&T Concrete from the Indian engineering group Larsen & Toubro. When Larsen & Toubro sold its cement business to Birla in 2003, who renamed it UltraTech Cement, the engineering group kept the ready-mixed concrete business.
L&T Concrete is the largest producer of ready-mixed concrete in the rapidly growing Indian market. At present, only about 3% of the Indian cement consumption goes into ready-mixed concrete. The business currently operates 66 batching plants and claims a market share of around a quarter.
Twenty-five of the plants are in the south of the country, with the remainder being in the west and in the north. This year, the volume of L&T Concrete is expected to reach around 4.1Mm³. Holcim is believed to have shown some interest in L&T Concrete, but not being prepared to pay a premium for a business with such low barriers of entry, especially since it had already started to develop a ready-mixed concrete business under the name of ACC Concrete.
Published under Cement News
