CRH buys Finnish concrete business

Finland’s 4438 Lemminkäinen has signed an agreement to sell all outstanding shares in its concrete business to 3636 Rudus, which is part of Ireland-based materials giant 723 CRH.

Rudus is based in Finland and works in concrete and stone building materials and products. The transaction price for the sale of Lemminkäinen Rakennustuotteet Oy is €55 million. The transaction will require regulatory approvals from the Finnish competition authorities, which is expected to be take until the third quarter of 2012.

The divested company is part of Lemminkäinen's Infrastructure Construction business sector and has a total of 24 plants across three business areas: precast concrete elements, landscaping concrete products and ready-mixed concrete. The business' net sales in 2011 were about €84 million and it has some 400 employees in Finland.

"Lemminkäinen is focusing on its key strategic growth areas, which are the Nordic infrastructure construction and residential construction in the St Petersburg area in Russia,” said president and CEO Timo Kohtamäki. “Achieving significant growth in the concrete business would have required major investments. Now the business gets excellent development opportunities under the new ownership.”

Rudus operates in Finland, the Baltic countries and Russia.