The Philippine Star

Phinma acquiring Petra Cement for P500 M

- Richmond Mercurio

The Phinma Group is acquiring Petra Cement Inc., a cement manufactur­er with a facility in Zamboanga del Norte, for P500 million.

In a stock exchange filing, Phinma said subsidiary Philcement Corp. inked a share purchase agreement with Petra Cement for its 100 percent outstandin­g shares.

Petra Cement is a company that was put up by Gilbert Cruz, who is also one of the cornerston­es of Big Boss Cement Inc., a cement firm chaired by Henry Sy Jr.

Philcement Mindanao Corp., a subsidiary of Philcement, will pay P500 million in exchange for the outstandin­g shares.

The transactio­n is expected to be closed by the end of the year.

Phinma said the acquisitio­n is aligned with Philcement­Õs growth strategy and would support its commitment to assure Filipino consumers with reliable and high-quality supply of cement products under its legacy brand, Union Cement.

Last January, Philcement signed a manufactur­ing and sale agreement with Petra Cement to enable the former to operate the Petra plant in Zamboanga del Norte.

The plant comprises a cement grinding facility with a capacity of 500,000 metric tons per annum, which serves the growing and dynamic Northern Mindanao market.

Philcement is engaged in the manufactur­e, importatio­n, processing, distributi­on and sale of cement products.

The company currently operates a cement processing facility in the Freeport Area of Bataan in Mariveles.

Philcement­Õs Mariveles cement facility is considered as the first stateof-the-art cement facility in the country and one of the largest independen­t cement terminals globally.

The facility has an initial annual capacity of two million metric tons of cement or 400,000 bags a day.

Philcement president and CEO Eduardo Sahagun earlier said the group also intends to invest about P2 billion to put up a new facility in Davao to further solidify its presence in the cement industry.

Sahagun said the company is working on the environmen­tal clearance certificat­e for the planned Davao facility.

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