CRH acquires Lafarge-Holcim assets

With CRH winning the auction for the largest part of the Lafarge- Holcim assets, it seems that the French and Swiss companies are on the right track to creating a powerful company that will control 20 percent of the global market outside China.

When Holcim and Lafarge, the two giants of the cement industry, announced their plans to merge in the spring of 2014, the sector's responses were mixed. Some feared that the new company, representing a merger of equals, will be too large to compete with, making little, if any, room for medium and smaller manufacturers who were struggling as it were to survive on the market, while some large companies worried that the market will no longer be segmented, but monopolized as a result of the merger.

Read the rest of the article in the CemWeek Magazine, Issue 24-25.