Lafarge (company)
| Lafarge SA
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|---|---|
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| legal form | Société Anonyme |
| founding | 1833 |
| resolution | 2015 |
| Seat | Paris , France |
| management | Bruno Lafont ( PDG ) |
| Number of employees | 63,000 |
| sales | EUR 12.843 billion |
| Branch | Building materials |
| Website | www.lafarge.com |
| As of December 31, 2014 | |
Before the merger with Holcim to form LafargeHolcim, Lafarge was a global company based in Paris with the business areas cement , concrete , aggregates and gypsum . In 2013 the turnover was 15.2 billion euros. The group employed 64,000 people worldwide. In Germany, the headquarters of the operating company "Zement" had been located in Karsdorf since 2012 . Both the administration for Austria and the Europe Technical Center were located in Vienna.
history
The company was founded in 1833 by Léon Pavin de Lafarge. It mined refractory stones in a quarry on the Ardèche . In 1864, Lafarge supplied 110,000 tons of limestone to build the Suez Canal . In 1931 Lafarge expanded its activities to include the gypsum business. Eight years later, Lafarge was the largest cement manufacturer in France. The company built its first cement plant in the United States in 1956 and founded Lafarge Cement of North America .
In 1980 the merger with the Belgian Coppée took place, the new name was Lafarge Coppée . In 1994 the first business activities took place in China. Three years later, Lafarge entered the roofing materials business with the takeover of British Redland . In 2000, the company entered into a partnership with the nature conservation organization WWF and started a global CO 2 climate protection program.
In December 2001, with the acquisition of Blue Circle Industries , Lafarge became the largest cement manufacturer in the world, ahead of its leading competitor, Holcim . On June 29, 2004, the company's management decided to double the production capacity of its plant in Dujiangyan to 2.4 million tons per year. On August 11, 2005 , a partnership agreement was signed with Shui On Construction , a Chinese cement manufacturer, and Lafarge Shui On Cement was founded. In November 2005, the company acquired a competitor in southwest China and announced further investments with the aim of achieving an annual production capacity of 21 million tons of cement. This makes the joint venture one of the three largest cement manufacturers in China.
In 2004, Lafarge was fined EUR 86 million for participating in the cement cartel . The company filed an objection.
Bruno Lafont was appointed Lafarge's new CEO on January 1, 2006. Together with the École des Ponts ParisTech and École polytechnique , Lafarge founded the world's first chair for sustainable construction in the field of materials science on March 22 of the same year . PAI partners and Lafarge announced on March 1, 2007 that they have completed the sale of the roofing materials business, Lafarge Roofing, to PAI for an amount of 2.4 billion euros. In addition to PAI, Lafarge initially held a 35 percent stake in the new company, which was renamed Monier at the beginning of 2008 (now the Braas Monier Building Group ).
On January 23, 2008, Lafarge acquired the Egyptian company Orascom Cement , the leading cement manufacturer in the Middle East and the North African Mediterranean countries, for EUR 8.8 billion .
On April 7, 2014, Holcim and Lafarge announced that they were aiming for a “merger of equals through a share swap”. LafargeHolcim is based in Switzerland, has almost 140,000 employees and an annual turnover of over 30 billion euros. The merger of the two companies began on July 14, 2015 with the renaming of Holcim Ltd. in LafargeHolcim Ltd. and the additional listing of the shares on Euronext Paris . Lafarge initially remained listed as an independent company on Euronext Paris, but the remaining Lafarge shareholders were forcibly compensated by a squeeze-out in September 2015 .
The group
The Lafarge Group operates more than 1,900 plants and production facilities worldwide. Among them is Perlmooser AG, which has existed since 1872, and Lafarge Perlmooser AG, which has been part of Lafarge since 1996 .
Lafarge operates a global network of research and development facilities with a total of 500 employees. There are cooperation projects with various universities and research institutions in the USA, France and Switzerland.
In addition to a global partnership with the nature conservation organization WWF, the group has entered into global partnerships with CARE and Habitat for Humanity . Lafarge is still a member of the Global Business Coalition on HIV / AIDS and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) for sustainable development.
Connection to the terrorist organization IS
In June 2016 it was reported that Lafarge had entered into a financial "arrangement" with the terrorist organization Islamic State to operate its plants in Syria . Lafarge emphasized, however, that she did this out of consideration for the workers. In October 2017, a simple bomb was also said to have been found under one of the company's delivery trucks in Paris .
In the spring of 2018, it became known that, according to press research in the Syrian civil war , Lafarge had paid around US $ 5 million to armed groups since 2011 to protect its involvement in Syria. Lafarge had opened a $ 610 million factory near Manbij in 2010 and is said to have paid money first to Kurdish groups and then to the terrorist organization Islamic State later during the war so that it could continue to operate until it was finally occupied by the terrorist group in late 2014. In 2018, six executives were investigated in connection with the financing of terrorism.
See also
Web links
- Homepage of Lafarge's German cement activities.
- Homepage of the German plaster activities of Lafarge.
- Homepage of the Austrian Lafarge Group
- International homepage of the building material manufacturer
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Annual Report: Registration Document Lafarge 2014. (PDF, 5.5 MB) Lafarge SA, p. 10 , archived from the original on April 17, 2015 ; accessed on July 8, 2018 .
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↑ Cement giants Holcim and Lafarge merge. In: orf.at . April 7, 2014, accessed July 8, 2018 . Merger to form LafargeHolcim, the most progressive group in the building materials industry. (PDF) (No longer available online.) Press release from Holcim, April 7, 2014, archived from the original on April 27, 2014 ; accessed on July 8, 2018 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
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↑ Lafarge-Holcim celebrates. In: nzz.ch . July 15, 2015, accessed July 8, 2018 . Lafarge-Holcim receives approval. In: nzz.ch. September 30, 2015, accessed July 8, 2018 .
- ↑ Stefan Brändle: How a French group came to terms with IS. In: derStandard.at . June 22, 2016. Retrieved July 8, 2018 .
- ↑ Another suspected bomb found in Paris. In: orf.at. October 5, 2017, accessed July 8, 2018 .
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↑ Marc Bürgi: How Lafarge risked the cooperation with IS. In: Handelszeitung . October 12, 2016, accessed July 8, 2018 . Stefan Simons: Construction materials company Lafarge: Baksheesh for jihadists. In: Spiegel Online . July 7, 2018, accessed July 8, 2018 . Liz Alderman, Elian Peltier, Hwaida Saad: 'ISIS Is Coming!' How a French Company Pushed the Limits in War-Torn Syria. In: The New York Times . March 10, 2018, accessed July 8, 2018 .
