New Delhi: Gautam Adani’s company announced on Sunday that it has reached an agreement to buy a majority stake in Holcim Ltd’s Indian assets for USD 10.5 billion, marking the ports-to-energy conglomerate’s foray into the cement industry.
Adani has expanded beyond its primary business of operating ports, power plants, and coal mines in recent years to include airports, data centers, and clean energy.
Last year, the group formed two cement subsidiaries: Adani Cementation Ltd, which planned to build two cement plants in Gujarat and Maharashtra, and Adani Cement Ltd.
The deal will make billionaire Gautam Adani’s conglomerate the second-largest player in the domestic cement sector by acquiring the joint control of Holcim’s two Indian step-down firms ACC Ltd and Ambuja Cement.
With this, the Adani Group became the second largest cement producer in the country after the Aditya Birla Group owned UltraTech Cement, the company said in a statement. The JSW Group was also in the race to acquire the Ambuja-ACC combine.
Holcim’s latest attempt to minimize its reliance on carbon-intensive cement manufacture, an industrial process that creates significant amounts of CO2 emissions and has thus deterred many environmentally sensitive investors, is the divestiture of its India assets.
Forbes named Adani Asia’s richest man after he signed definitive agreements to buy Holcim Ltd’s full stake in Ambuja and ACC via an offshore special purpose entity.
The Adani Group has expanded beyond its primary business of operating ports, power plants, and coal mines in recent years to include airports, data centers, and clean energy.
Last year, the group established two cement subsidiaries: Adani Cementation Ltd, which planned to build two cement plants in Gujarat and Maharashtra, and Adani Cement Ltd.
“Our move into the cement business is yet another validation of our belief in our nation’s growth story,” said Gautam Adani, Chairman of the Adani Group. “Not only is India expected to remain one of the world’s largest demand-driven economies for several decades, India also continues to be the world’s second largest cement market and yet has less than half of the global average per capita cement consumption.”
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