French Lafarge mulls purchase of Bazelcement

2011-12-02



Lafarge Group, a French industrial company, plans to buy 75% of Bazelcement, owned by Russian tycoon Oleg Deripaska.

The leading Russian cement company, Eurocement, is also interested in purchasing these assets, while the Irish Cement Roadstone Holdings (CRH) still remains the main bidder with an offer of $500-600m (€374-449m)for Oleg Deripaska's assets but excluding the Bazel-Pikalevo assets. In turn, a Bazel-Pikalevo alumina production plant will be sold separately to Fosagro, a Russian producer of high-grade phosphate rock.

As Russian Construction Review reported on a previous occasion, Bazelcement’s business consists of two operating plants: one in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, with an annual capacity of 872,000 tonnes, and the other in Kazakhstan. Two more Bazel plants are being built – in the Ryazan and Nihzny Novgorod provinces. In addition, the company owns a gravel and lime production plant which could be included in the transaction. This might be worth €393-429m.