economic value
“The acquisition of over 25 readymixed concrete plants is great for our business and our employees and will enable us to serve more customers with our innovative range of specialist concretes.”
Gordon Napier, area director, Materials – South West and South Wales
highlights
We’re proud to have completed a number of ambitious acquisitions during the year and have continued to invest in our business (read more below). We’ve also continued to work with our key strategic customers, forging new relationships and planning our future on a variety of national projects.
We have continued to grow our business and have maintained our focused growth strategy with a number of strategic investments across our business in 2018. We were excited by the acquisition of more than 25 additional readymix concrete plants from the Breedon Group and the acquisition of Hopkins, readymix concrete producer enabling Tarmac to expand into new markets and provide enhanced service to customers in Wales and the South West England.
In January 2018, we completed the acquisition of the Alun Griffiths business, a successful and well-respected regional civil engineering and surfacing business in the UK, operating largely in Wales, the Midlands, and South West England. The business which now forms part of our Contracting business has operated for 50 years and has over 700 employees operating out of six regional offices.
Our Contracting business has also created a new Infrastructure team, helping to support former Carillion employees to find new roles and ensuring the continuity and continued delivery of critical highways projects. This new team is in charge of running some of the UK’s most important multi-million pound civil engineering projects.
Within our Building Products business we’ve made investment to produce dry silo mortar (DSM) 24 hours a day, boosting our production by an additional 3,000 tonnes a week.
We have also been preparing the ground for a new, flagship Tarmac Safety Park - a world-class training centre at Nether Langwith Quarry, Nottinghamshire. This will be the hub for Tarmac’s Professional Operator Development Programme and will include classroom facilities, working areas and virtual reality training tools.
2018 saw further development of our rail freight capacity and capabilities in our Materials business, with new routes, new equipment and the introduction of new technologies. Bringing on line new routes and reconnecting sites with rail capabilities has enabled us to run We ran 15 more trains a week, compared to the previous year. These new routes help to ensure that we continue to economically deliver the tonnage around the country utilising a more sustainable form of transport.
We’ve also continued investment in our most important asset, our people. Read more about our graduate, apprenticeship and the learning and development programmes.
Tarmac forms part of CRH plc and as such our 2018 financial performance is included in CRH plc financial reports.