Buying the Oro Grande and Redding plants — and the ready-mix and aggregates behind them (2015)

Five loss-making years, and the cheques got bigger

From 2009 to 2013, CalPortland posted operating losses five years running. The core of this decision lies in not folding a business whose operating margin reached minus 20%, and then raising the sums committed to it afterwards — $420 million, $250 million, $712 million. By the time president Fukuda Shuji said in 2017 that the company could not be run on domestic demand alone, the United States was evidently no longer a candidate for withdrawal but was being treated as the pillar to put in place of domestic cement.

That is not to say America is guaranteed to be a safe place to earn. Cement volumes fell to 6.12 million tonnes in 2024, are forecast at 5.92 million in 2025, and operating profit is expected to drop to $182 million. If high interest rates chill housing demand, the US is a market where volumes fall just as they do at home. The ready-mixed concrete and aggregates bought alongside are also a device for securing an internal destination for the company’s own cement when demand thins — and the test of how well that works is still ahead.