Nirma to buy Lafarge India cement assets
Nirma Ltd. has recently agreed to acquire Lafarge India’s cement assets for about $1.4 billion (Rs.9,400 crore), outbidding Sajjan Jindal-led JSW Cement and Piramal Enterprises, as Indian companies vie to add capacity for the building material to tap growing demand from the infrastructure sector. LafargeHolcim, the Swiss building materials behemoth created out of the 2015 Lafarge-Holcim merger, will sell its Lafarge India business including three plants and two grinding units with a total capacity of about 11 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) to Nirma, subject to approval by the Competition Commission of India (CCI), the Zurich-based company said. Nirma, the Ahmedabad-based detergents and chemicals maker, currently operates a 2 MTPA cement unit. The additional capacity will help it benefit from an expected surge in infrastructure construction as India aims to boost spending on the key sector to about 8.1 per cent of GDP by 2021-22, according to an IMF Working Paper. Nirma, which will fund the acquisition through an equal mix of equity and debt, expects the acquisition to be “transformational” for its cement business, Hiren Patel, Managing Director said.
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