2023, Italian cement manufacturer Buzzi, through its subsidiary Dyckerhoff, reached an agreement with Irish group CRH to sell its business in Eastern Europe to CRH. These include the Ukrainian cement assets of two cement plants, Volyn-Cement (Rivne Oblast) and YUGcement (Nikolayev Oblast). On 5 September 2024, the Anti-Monopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMCU) approved CRH Ukraine's acquisition of 99.9775% of Dyckerhoff Cement Ukraine. This will make CRH the largest cement producer in Ukraine.
CRH, a global cement producer, entered the Ukrainian market in 1999 and operates three cement plants in Ukraine, Podilsky Cement (Khmelnitsky, 2.05 million tons of cement capacity), LLC Cement (Odessa, 550,000 tons) and Mykolaiv Cement (900,000 tons in Lviv Oblast). The acquisition of Dyckerhoff will add two cement plants: Volyn-Cement (Rivne Oblast, cement production capacity of more than 2 million tons) and YUGCement (Nikolayev Oblast, cement production capacity of 1.25 million tons, the largest cement plant in southern Ukraine).
With these five cement plants, CRH's cement production capacity in Ukraine will reach 6.75 million tons, and its market share will exceed that of any other company. If all 10 plants in Ukraine's government-controlled area, including the two that are not currently operating, are taken into account, Ukraine has a capacity of 13.6 million tons. However, Ukraine still needs to produce an additional 2-3 million tons of cement per year under the three-year reconstruction plan, USAID said. Forbes Ukraine calculates that the takeover would give CRH a 46% market share, compared with 44% for Ukrainian Ivano Frankivsk Cement.
Since the war between Russia and Ukraine, cement has become a key material for Ukraine's reconstruction. The importance of cement to Ukraine's reconstruction has made the deal controversial. If the country's antitrust regulator allows the deal to proceed, Ukraine will be left with just three active cement producers – CRH, Ivano Frankivsk Cement and Kryvi Rih Cement.
Previously, the Ukrainian Inter-ministerial Committee on International Trade imposed anti-dumping measures on cement imports from Russia, Belarus and Moldova, and imposed high tariffs on cement imports to eliminate foreign competition, enabling domestic cement enterprises in Ukraine to occupy 95% of the market. In the past decade, Russia's aggression has dealt a severe blow to Ukraine's cement industry, annexing three cement plants in occupied Donbas and Crimea. In 2022, the Russian army destroyed a cement factory owned by Baltsem in Kharkiv. In addition, the Kramatorsk Cement Plant in Donetsk was seized and nationalized by the Ukrainian government from Russian owners in 2023. Ukraine's cement companies are already highly concentrated due to
import restrictions and war destruction, and economists warn that the acquisition will further aggravate the already highly concentrated market, allowing cement producers to raise prices at will, thereby increasing the cost of reconstruction. In September 2023, the Anti-Monopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMCU) returned CRH's acquisition application without review on the grounds that it did not meet the requirements, noting that the group had about a third of the Ukrainian cement market. In October of that year, the agency reopened the case. The approval was made after a review by the Anti-Monopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMCU).
