Concrete Firm in Santa Ana to Be Acquired

CBR Cement Corp. of San Mateo said Thursday that it has agreed to acquire Standard Concrete Products Inc., a Santa Ana concrete producer with annual sales of $75 million. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Standard, which employs more than 300 people, operates eight ready-mix concrete plants and a sand and rock company in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

“This provides us an opportunity to move into a growing market in Southern California,” said Lesley Yarborough, a CBR Cement spokeswoman,

Yarborough said they expect the transaction to close by Oct. 1, provided the deal receives the necessary regulatory approvals. David Horowitz, Standard’s president, said he doesn’t expect any changes in the company’s operations.

“They (CBR executives) told us that they operate their companies in a decentralized way, allowing subsidiaries to operate separately,” he added.

This is the second major U.S. acquisition by CBR Cement, the North American subsidiary of Cimenteries CBR S.A., Belgium’s largest cement manufacturer. Two years ago, the Belgian firm acquired the former Monolith Portland Cement Co. in Burbank, for $16.2 million.

With annual sales of $1.1 billion, Cimenteries has concrete and aggregate operations in Western Europe and North America. It entered the U.S. and Canadian market in 1986 by acquiring the former Genstar Corp.’s West Coast and western Canadian operations.