Aggregate Industries to acquire Foster Yeoman
AGGREGATE Industries Ltd have reached agreement on the proposed takeover of Foster Yeoman, a move that will bring to an end 83 years of independent operations by the Somerset-based firm.
As a privately owned group, Foster Yeoman are one of the few remaining substantial independent players in the UK quarrying sector. The Yeoman family, who have run the business for three generations, are understood to own around two thirds of the company.
Aggregate Industries, who are believed to have offered around £300 million in cash for the firm, have received the irrevocable support of 68.3% of Foster Yeoman’s shareholders, an undertaking that will remain binding in the event of any competing offer. The acquisition will be notified to the relevant competition authorities.
In a comment on Times Online, Bill Bolsover, Aggregate Industries chief executive officer, said the takeover of Foster Yeoman would complement his group operationally, geographically and culturally, and allow Aggregate Industries to expand UK annual production by around 30% to 40 million tonnes.
Foster Yeoman own Torr Works limestone quarry in Somerset and the Glensanda granite coastal quarry in Argyll, Scotland, which together have almost 1 billion tonnes of planned and unplanned reserves. The company’s sales activities are supported by a network of depots across the UK and a network of sales points at major ports in northern and western Continental Europe.
In the year ended 27 May 2005, Foster Yeoman achieved a turnover of approximately £224 million and sold more than 11 million tonnes of aggregates and around 1.5 million tonnes of asphalt.
A statement from Aggregate Industries’ Swiss parent company, Holcim, described the acquisition as a ‘rounding out of Aggregate Industries’ aggregates and asphalt operations in the UK’. It added that the deal would secure the Holcim Group an attractive network in the coastal markets of northern Europe as well as reinforcing the group’s dual product strategy centering on cement and aggregates.
