Building materials group CRH has acquired two North American companies, Hallet Materials and Des Moines Asphalt & Pacing Co, for $74.9m.
CRH also said it had acquired a 25% stake in Mashav Group, the holding company for Nesher Cement, the sole producer of cement in Israel. CRH will provide equity finance of $47.8m and FIBI Investment House a further $97.1m. CRH can acquire a further 25% of Mashav before January 2004.
Liam O'Mahony, CRH's Chief Executive said: 'These investments are very much in line with the strategy of both our materials divisions.'
'The Hallet and Des Moines businesses provide an excellent platform for the materials group to enter the Iowa market, which has good demand prospect,' according to Mr O'Mahony. He said the investment in Mashav was the company's first move into the 'growing Middle East building materials market'.
Hallet Materials and Des Moines Asphalt & Pacing were two unrelated companies headquartered in Des Moines. Hallet, which operates in Iowa, is an aggregates company with over 80 million tons of permitted reserves.
Des Moines Asphalt & Pacing is a leading asphalt paving contractor in central Iowa. The combined adjusted trading profit of these two businesses in 2000, after depreciation of $2.9m, amounted to $12.6m on sales of $57.3m.
Mashav, the holding company for Nesher Cement, runs two dry process production lines at its main facility in Ramla and a single semi-dry process plant at Har Tuv, which supplies cement throughout Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. In 2000, Nesher sold 5.7m tonnes of cement. Mashav, which also has a 50% interest in a logistics and transportation company, had 428m euro in sales and pre-tax profits of 65m euro last year.
Riverdeep shares were down almost 0.8% at 3.25pm on the Dublin stock exchange - they had fallen by 15 cents to stand at 19.25 euro.
