January 6, 2016
The company and Victoria believe this is a great opportunity to enter into a new business line that is totally complementary to Corona’s building materials portfolio. It also provides the opportunity to capitalize from its approx. 100 years’ worth of limestone reserves (limestone serves as raw material for cement production), as well as from Corona’s know-how for mining their limestone queries and their current vast distribution network in Colombia.
This initiative will be executed via a 50%-50% JV with CM and includes the construction of a plant with a capacity of 1.4 million tons per year with a total investment of approx. USD 370 mm, located 160km northwest of Bogota roughly in the center of the country. The plant is expected to be completed by mid-2018. The project will be financed through a combination of equity contributed by Corona and CM, Corona’s limestone reserves contributed to the JV and project finance loans.
Based in Barcelona, Spain CM is an international cement player with presence beside Spain in Mexico, Uruguay, Argentina, Bangladesh, Tunisia and Bolivia. In early 2014 Victoria introduced CM to Corona as we believe it was the right partner to develop the project given their (i) deep cement industry expertise including markets like Mexico where CM has competed with great success with Cemex, (ii) experience in Latam (Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia), and (iii) it’s family-owned business with similar values as Corona’s.
Please find below links to media articles about the deal and CM’s and Corona’s press releases.
http://www.dinero.com/empresas/articulo/los-ambiciosos-planes-corona-consolidan-mas-nunca/214124