Chilean cement company Empresas Melón posted a 16.6bn peso (US$26.8m) consolidated net profit in 2003, up 6.68 per cent from the year before, Melón said in a statement to the country’s securities regulator (SVS).  For the period, revenue increased 9.34 per cent to 139bn pesos and operating profit grew 26.8 per cent to 26.7bn pesos.  In 2003, Melón, controlled by France’s Lafarge, held a 36.4% market share. Cement deliveries in Chile grew 4.6 per cent in 2003 to 3.62Mt, the highest since 1998 (3.85Mt) when the country’s economic crisis negatively impacted the sector in the following years, due to large-scale infrastructure projects. Published under Cement News