LafargeHolcim Ltd, the world’s biggest cement firm was born out of the merger of equals between Lafarge and Holcim and made its debut on the Swiss and Paris stock exchanges on July 14.
The merger created a company with combined sales of 42 billion dollars and operations in 90 countries.
The united group, which has over 180 years of combined experience, aims to usher in a new era of leading-edge technologies and innovations in the building materials industry to address the challenges of the 21st century.
The new company with a combined global capacity of 386 million tons per annum (mtpa) will have a major focus on emerging markets in Africa and Asia including Nigeria.
The firm operates in Nigeria under the brand name of Lafarge Africa, which emerged last year through the combination of Lafarge’s Nigerian and South African assets.
Lafarge Africa Plc is listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), rather than Johannesburg – a sign of Lafarge’s growing confidence in the strength of the Nigerian economy, which is Africa’s largest.
Nigeria’s cement market has been growing at around 10 percent per annum since 2004, and an estimated 21 million tons of cement was sold in Nigeria in 2014, with about 5% of that or 1.1 million tons imported.
About one billion more people are expected in and around urban areas by 2020.
“We aim to capture the recovery in developed markets while ensuring long-term sustainable growth in emerging markets,” LafargeHolcim’s Chief Executive Eric Olsen said in July.
