Capture Supplier and Operator Margins In-House

“Haselsteiner not only wanted to create the largest construction empire in Europe and conquer Russia, but his corporation was also to represent the entire breadth of the industry—every type of construction and the entire value chain. Strabag had already occupied the end of this chain with the acquisition of DeTeImmobilien; now it was necessary to become active at the beginning, which includes the cement industry. In May 2010, Strabag SE, together with Lafarge SA, founded the Lafarge Cement CE Holding GmbH. Lafarge is headquartered in Paris and is not only the world’s leading building materials manufacturer but also “coincidentally” the market-leading building materials manufacturer in Central and Eastern Europe, Strabag’s core markets. With a 30 percent stake, Strabag became the smaller partner in the joint venture, into which the French building material giant integrated, among other things, its Austrian subsidiary Lafarge Perlmooser AG, the largest cement manufacturer in Austria with an annual production of 1.6 million tons and locations in Vienna, Upper and Lower Austria, and Burgenland. Additionally, one Lafarge cement plant in the Czech Republic and one in Slovenia were incorporated into the new cement holding.”

“With the Kirchner Holding, another medium-sized German construction company was acquired a few weeks later, which was primarily active in Poland and was intended to strengthen Strabag’s position in that country. Additionally, the new subsidiary had a focus on the future sector of environmental technology. In Austria, the Haselsteiner Group took over half of the publicly traded Graz-based toll technology expert Efkon. The company had, among other things, designed the Austrian section control systems and supplied 500,000 GO-Boxes for the truck toll system to Asfinag. This allowed Strabag to enter into the operation of the Austrian toll system through the backdoor—a belated satisfaction for Haselsteiner. The Styrians were also the main suppliers for the German truck toll system. “The acquisition enables Strabag to position us as a full-service provider of state-of-the-art infrastructure facilities and toll systems, from design to implementation to operation,” the head of the group expressed satisfaction.”