HeidelbergCement

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HeidelbergCement AG

logo
legal form Corporation
ISIN DE0006047004
founding 1874
Seat Heidelberg , GermanyGermanyGermany 
management
  • Dominik vonuchten , CEO
    Lorenz Näger
    Kevin Gluskie
    Hakan Gurdal
    Jon Morrish
    Ernest Jelito
    Chris Ward
Number of employees 55,047 (2019)
sales 18.85 billion euros (2019)
Branch Building materials
Website www.heidelbergcement.com
As of December 31, 2019

Former company headquarters in Heidelberg . The new headquarters will be built on the same site and is expected to be inaugurated in mid-2020.

The HeidelbergCement AG , headquartered in Heidelberg is a listed building materials group . The company is number 1 worldwide for aggregates , number 2 for cement and number 3 for ready-mixed concrete . The group operates in 60 countries with 60,000 employees and 3,000 locations.

HeidelbergCement operates 143 cement plants with a production capacity of almost 130 million tons of cement and clinker per year, 1470 ready-mixed concrete plants and around 600 extraction sites for aggregates. In 2019 (2018), the company achieved sales of 18.9 (18.1) billion euros and net income of 1.2 (1.3) billion euros.

Business areas

In the cement sector, HeidelbergCement offers normal cements, special cements, for example for the construction of hydraulic structures and sewage treatment plants, as well as special binders and environmental technology for landfill construction and the remediation of contaminated sites. Other business areas are aggregates such as sand and gravel , concrete and lime products; the sand-lime brick business area comprises an extensive range of brick formats and accessories.

history

Concrete plant in Lindenberg (Barnim)

HeidelbergCement goes back to the Bergheimer Mühle located in Heidelberg , which was acquired on January 3, 1873 in bankruptcy proceedings from the Mosbach brewer Johann Philipp Schifferdecker and converted into a cement factory.

1874, the company has been in the legal form of a general partnership under the company Cement Portland plant Heidelberg, Schifferdecker & Söhne in the commercial register registered, 1875 started the production of cement. In 1889 the company was converted into a stock corporation, which began a phase of strong expansion, including the construction of new cement factories. From 1893 to 1916 Carl Leonhard (1848–1930) was the company's commercial director. In 1901 the Heidelberg Portland-Cement-Werk merges with the Mannheimer Portland-Cement-Fabrik AG to form the Portland-Cement-Fabrik Heidelberg und Mannheim AG . In 1918 the Leimen – Nußloch material cable car was opened, which supplied the plant with the limestone it needed.

After the seizure of power in 1933, the then board member Dr. Ehrhart Schott initially opposed the Nazis' influence in the factories. Shortly thereafter he was taken into protective custody and finally resigned from his post in May 1933. The general director of the company, Otto Heuer , however, had joined the NSDAP on May 1st and belonged to the Friends of the Reichsführer SS . The state construction and armaments projects caused the cement industry to boom and ensured an overall positive view of the politics of the Reich government in the increasingly harmonized company. By 1938, numerous other cement factories and quarries had been acquired (e.g. Portland-Zement Blaubeuren Gebrüder Spohn AG in 1938 ) and the company expanded through various mergers . Now the company operated under the name Portland-Zementwerke Heidelberg Aktiengesellschaft . During the Second World War, the cement industry was classified as vital to the war effort and initially had only minor restrictions in production. As the war went on, prisoners of war and forced laborers were used in numerous plants; According to the company, the number of people affected is estimated at 1,000. After the war, in which most of the plants remained largely undamaged, the entire board was dismissed and the former board member Dr. Ehrhart Schott used to rebuild the company.

In 1959, the company also entered the ready-mix concrete industry. In 1977 the company expanded to North America and founded subsidiaries there. Other branches of the building materials trade were also opened up (building materials chemistry, insulation systems). In 1978 the company was renamed Heidelberger Zement Aktiengesellschaft .

In 1993, 42.4% of the Belgian SA Cimenteries CBR was acquired , which was completely taken over in 1999. In the 1990s, the company became increasingly international, in particular through expansion into East Asia. Also in 1999 the building materials manufacturer Scancem was taken over in Sweden, where the company now operates as Cementa . From 2001, the Indonesian cement manufacturer Indocement was gradually taken over with the help of WestLB . In 2002 the company was renamed HeidelbergCement .

At the beginning of 2005 Adolf Merckle took control of the company and appointed Bernd Scheifele as CEO ; after the completion of a public takeover offer in July 2005, Spohn Cement and other shareholders of the Merckle group of companies held almost 78% of the shares in HeidelbergCement.

In 2005, HeidelbergCement took over 100 percent of the Bukhtarma Cement Company (BCC) in Kazakhstan . In May 2007, the group announced the takeover of the British building materials group Hanson for 9.5 billion pounds (14.0 billion euros), the largest takeover in the building materials sector to date. This takeover was largely financed by outside capital, but also through the placement of the 35 percent stake in the French cement manufacturer Vicat in June 2007, which generated proceeds of around one billion euros, and the sale of the building materials subsidiary Maxit for 2.13 billion euros in August 2007 to the French competitor Saint-Gobain .

In September 2009, the company announced a combined capital increase and share placement designed to help reduce the company's debt (with net debt of € 11.3 billion as of June 30, 2009) through the placement of 62.5 million new shares to discharge its main shareholder, the Merckle Group, by placing 57.2 million old shares. Ludwig Merckle , heir to Adolf Merckle, reduced his stake significantly from 72.4% to below 25%. HeidelbergCement was admitted to the DAX on June 21, 2010 .

HeidelbergCement administration building in Tbilisi ( Georgia )

In April 2013, the cement company CJSC Construction Materials , based in the Russian Republic of Bashkortostan, was acquired. In July 2016, HeidelbergCement completed the takeover of 45 percent of Italian Italcementi that had been announced in the previous year .

HeidelbergCement including Italcementi

shares

The company is one of the leading listed companies in German post-war history and has been included in the German Stock Index ( DAX ). The major shareholder is VEMOS 2 Beteiligungen GmbH (Zossen) with around 25.5 percent.

Shareholder structure

Around a quarter of the share capital with voting rights is held by Ludwig Merckle and is considered a permanent property, the remaining 74.5% are included in the free float . For shareholders with reportable shares see table:

Share
(in percent)		 Shareholders
25.53 Ludwig Merckle on PH Vermögensverwaltung GmbH
4.61 First Eagle Investment Management, LLC
4.47 BlackRock
3.23 Artisan Partners Asset Management Inc.

Status: February 20, 2020

Cement cartel

In 2000, a total of 29 former customers filed a class action lawsuit in court, represented by the Belgian stock corporation Cartel Damage Claims (CDC) and associated with a claim of at least 113 million euros in damages for the allegedly excessive prices. According to the plaintiff's claim, damage of more than 150 million euros was incurred. CDC accuses the market leader HeidelbergCement as well as the companies Schwenk Zement , Lafarge , Dyckerhoff , Cemex and Holcim of having played a decisive role as a cartel in determining the price level in Germany between 1993 and 2001 and thus also having artificially kept construction prices at a high level. In 2004, HeidelbergCement AG, as one of the main players in the so-called cement cartel uncovered by the Federal Cartel Office , was fined EUR 252 million. The company appealed against this. The Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court reduced the fine to 160 million euros in 2009. In April 2013, the Federal Court of Justice dismissed HeidelbergCement's lawsuit against this antitrust fine in the last instance.

As early as 2000, the company had been fined approx. 3.5 million euros because since 1983 it had shared the European cement market with 41 European cement companies from 14 EU countries as well as Switzerland and Norway and the companies had shared each other Had declared waiver of the national market areas. The then EU Competition Commissioner Karel Van Miert was convinced that these agreements continued after 1994.

Criticism and public controversy

Indonesia

Through its subsidiary Indocement, HeidelbergCement is significantly involved in the planned construction of a controversial cement factory on the Indonesian island of Java . The aim is to develop the Kendeng Mountains against the resistance of the people living there. In addition to the destruction of the complex ecological system, the construction also resulted in the marginalization of the - partly indigenous - inhabitants of the region. There are already protests in the region by locals known as "Sedulur Kendeng" against the mining project of the state-owned cement company PT Semen Indonesia in the Kendeng Mountains. For this reason, in March 2017, 50 people had their feet set in concrete on the square in front of the Presidential Palace in Jakarta. This is the second time in eleven months.

In addition to the protest against the new HeidelbergCement factory and its ecological consequences, as "misunderstood 'development' at the expense of indigenous peoples and farmers", the activists also made a political appeal to HeidelbergCement, according to which "a German company (...) in no country in the world Environmental destruction and human rights violations (may) invest ”.

United States

In November 2016, CEO Scheifele said the policies of US President Donald Trump would have a positive impact on the company's business. In particular, the wall planned by Trump on the border between the United States and Mexico will be "not made of wood, but of cement." With the construction of the wall "we would not be badly served in Texas and Arizona," said Scheifele, referring to the cement works there that belong to the company. The statement triggered incomprehension and protest. Although Scheifele reiterated his statement, a company spokesman said in January 2017 that the statements were "meant ironically" and "taken out of context". At the same time, the spokesman said that participation in the construction of the wall was not excluded.

West Bank

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank , HeidelbergCement exploits through its wholly owned subsidiary Hanson Israel, according to Israeli lawyers to international law the large quarry Nahal Raba made. According to research by the ARD magazine “Panorama” on September 2, 2010 and the ARD Studio Tel Aviv, the mined natural resources were brought to Israel and do not benefit the Palestinians. Palestinians from the village of az-Zawiya in the immediate vicinity of the quarry are claiming the land. In a lawsuit before the Israeli Supreme Court, the Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din called on the HeidelbergCement company and other Israeli operators of quarries in the occupied territory to stop mining in the West Bank. According to Panorama, HeidelbergCement and its subsidiary Hanson Israel did not want to comment on the allegations, but will continue to dismantle them until further notice. The Israeli Human Rights Association's lawsuit was dismissed by the Israeli Supreme Court on December 26, 2011.

Climate protection

HeidelbergCement is one of the DAX groups with the highest carbon dioxide emissions . A study by "right. Based on science" came to the conclusion that the earth would warm up by more than 10 ° C if all companies acted like HeidelbergCement. For this reason, there have already been protests against the group by FridaysForFuture and Extinction Rebellion .

CO 2 emissions from HeidelbergCement
year Quantity (in million tons)
1990 83.2
2017 73.8
2018 75.7
2019 72.6

See also

Web links

Commons : HeidelbergCement AG  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Annual Report 2019. (pdf) In: equitystory.com. Retrieved March 19, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Annual Report 2018. (pdf) In: equitystory.com. Retrieved August 23, 2019 .
  3. ^ Dietmar Cramer: The history of HeidelbergCement. The path of the southern German company to an international group. HeidelbergCement AG, 2013, p. 90 , accessed on April 6, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Statistical-Scientific Institute of the Reichsführer SS. Retrieved on April 6, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Dietmar Cramer: The history of HeidelbergCement The path of the southern German company to an international group. HeidelbergCement AG, 2013, p. 94 , accessed on April 6, 2020 .
  6. ^ Dietmar Cramer: The history of HeidelbergCement. The path of the southern German company to an international group. HeidelbergCement AG, 2013, p. 101 , accessed on April 6, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Takeover of Bukhtarma Cement Company by HeidelbergCement. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on August 20, 2013 ; Retrieved February 25, 2015 .
  8. ↑ Welcome to HeidelbergCement in Kazakhstan! Retrieved March 19, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Notification of voting rights dated September 25, 2009: 24.42%
  10. ^ H. Schwerdtfeger: Expensive purchases for index funds. In: Wirtschaftswoche from June 21, 2010.
  11. ↑ HeidelbergCement takes over cement producer in Russia. In: SOLID, Wirtschaft und Technik am Bau from April 21, 2013
  12. ↑ HeidelbergCement completes acquisition of 45% stake in Italcementi. In: www.heidelbergcement.com. Retrieved July 7, 2016 .
  13. ↑ Ad hoc: HeidelbergCement AG acquires 45% of the shares in Italcementi SpA In: www.heidelbergcement.com from July 28, 2015
  14. ↑ HeidelbergCement falls by 1.7 percent (September 7, 2018)
  15. ↑ Company information from Deutsche Börse, accessed February 14, 2017
  16. ↑ Shareholder structure. In: HeidelbergCement.com. Retrieved March 19, 2020 .
  17. ↑ HeidelbergCement has to pay a 160 million cartel fine , article in SOLID, Wirtschaft und Technik am Bau from April 13, 2013
  18. ↑ Warga Kendeng Tolak Pabrik Semen di Depan Kantor Kedutaan Jerman. In: Tempo.Co. May 16, 2016. Retrieved June 28, 2016 .
  19. ↑ Kendeng Against Cement. MR online, March 27, 2017, accessed on May 2, 2017 .
  20. ^ News - Berlin: Solidarity with Kendeng against HeidelbergCement. In: www.regenwald.org. Rettet den Regenwald eV, June 16, 2016, accessed on June 28, 2016 .
  21. ↑ Kristina Gnirke: Outrage over HeidelbergCement boss because of the Wall saying. In: spiegel.de. Der Spiegel , November 10, 2016, accessed on February 28, 2017 .
  22. ↑ HeidelbergCement does not rule out participation in the construction of the Wall in Mexico. wallstreet: online , January 26, 2017, accessed March 1, 2017 .
  23. ^ A b German Investment: Overexploitation in the Palestinian Territory , ARD magazine Panorama, September 2, 2010.
  24. ↑ Declaration by Yesh Din at the Supreme Court in Israel. ( Memento of March 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ).
  25. ↑ Climate change: DAX companies are warming the earth by 4.9 degrees. Editorial network Germany, accessed on August 1, 2020 .
  26. ↑ "Fridays for Future" target HeidelbergCement. Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung, accessed on August 1, 2020 .
  27. ↑ Criticism of the cement company. Mannheimer Morgen, accessed on August 1, 2020 .
  28. ^ Sustainability Report. Retrieved August 1, 2020 .