HeidelbergCement AG history, profile and history video
HeidelbergCement AG is engaged in the manufacture and distribution of building materials. It operates through the following segments: Cement, Aggregates, Building Products, and Concrete-Service-Other. The Cement segment include standard, specialty, and masonry cements; and specific binders. The Aggregates segment comprises sand, gravel, and crushed stone. The Building Products segment offers building materials that includes traditional materials as well as specific products for various applications such as sand-lime bricks, limestone, and lime products. The Concrete-Service-Other segment focuses on the downstream activities such as ready-mixed concrete and asphalt. The company was founded by Johann Philipp Schifferdecker in 1873 and is headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany.“
“HeidelbergCement History
The company was founded on 5 June 1874 by Johann Philipp Schifferdecker, atHeidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It was making 80,000 tonnes per annum of Portland cement in 1896. Numerous other small companies were taken over from 1914 onwards, and by 1936 it was making one million tonnes per annum. Activities abroad began with the acquisition of part of Vicat Cement,France. Shipments reached 8.3 million tonnes in 1972. In 1977, a massive program of purchases in North America began with the acquisition of Lehigh Cement. In 1990, expansion in eastern Europe began. In 1993, it acquired part of SA Cimenteries CBR of Belgium, which already had a major multinational operation. Since then it has continued to expand, with complete buy-out of CBR, and purchases in eastern Europe and Asia. A major step was the acquisition of Scancem in 1999, with operations in Northern Europe as well as Africa. Indocement in Indonesia was included in 2001. In 2007, the British company Hanson was acquired, a transaction worth £7.85 billion (US$15,8 billion), which gave the company a stronger market position in UK and US, and turned HeidelbergCement into the world’s leading producer of aggregates.
HeidelbergCement has (2010) 29 cement and grinding plants in Western and Northern Europe, 19 in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, 16 cement plants in North America, 14 in Africa and the Mediterranean Basin. The company sold Maxit Group and its 35% share in Vicat Cement to help finance its acquisition of Hanson plc in August 2007. In most of the Group’s European countries, HeidelbergCement is the market leader in the cement business.
Adolf Merckle was a big investor in HeidelbergCement . A capital increase in HeidelbergCement in September 2009, combined with a selling of shares from the Merckle family, opened up for other international owners and higher trading volumes on the stock exchanges.”
*Information from Forbes.com and Wikipedia.org
**Video published on YouTube by “HeidelbergCementCom“