Slovenia’s Cementarna Trbovlje Makes Solid Profit

Trbovlje, 04 November (STA) - Cement maker Lafarge Cement Cementarna Trbovlje posted a net profit for 2003 of SIT 868m (EUR 3.6m) on sales of SIT 7.6bn (EUR 31.7m), up over 10 percent over the year before. The profit will remain undistributed, the company’s shareholders’ assembly decided on Thursday.

The company is owned by Lafarge Perlmooser, a part of the France-based Lafarge group, one of the world’s biggest construction material manufacturers.

Chairman Franci Blaznek, who was given another term at the helm of the company today, said that the bottom line was boosted by record cement consumption in Slovenia last year, when 1.3Mt of cement was sold.

Cementarna Trbovlje produced 530,000t of cement in 2003, with some 11 per cent of the output sold to Croatia.

Yet Blaznek noted that Slovenia is importing increasing quantities of cement from is southern neighbour: in Croatia, cements costs 17 euros per tonne to produce, as opposed to 24 euros in Slovenia, he noted.