ASEC Cement closes sale to Misr Cement Qena

ASEC Cement, a business unit of Qalaa Holdings, on Sunday announced it reached financial close on the sale of its holdings in subsidiaries ASEC Minya Cement and ASEC Ready Mix Co to Misr Cement Qena for total consideration of around EGP1bn (US$127m).

“We are pleased to announce the sale process closed today, putting in place another cornerstone in our strategy to deleverage at both the holding and platform company levels,” said Qalaa Holdings chairman and founder, Ahmed Heikal.

“Both ASEC Minya and ASEC Ready Mix have established themselves as critical players in the vital Upper Egyptian market, and we are honoured to have worked with an exceptional management team at each of them to build them into the companies they are today.”

In addition to the proceeds generated for Qalaa, the sale of ASEC Minya & Ready-mix will result in a total of around EGP940m in debt deconsolidated at the ASEC Cement consolidated level.

Qalaa had announced on 1 November that it had signed a sale and purchase agreement for the transaction.

ASEC Minya Cement is an Egyptian cement producer located in Upper Egypt. It began commercial operations in August 2013 with a name plate capacity of 2Mta. ASEC Ready Mix is a producer and distributor of ready-mix concrete, the company operates six batch plants in Upper Egypt with production in FY14 reaching 382,000m3.

At the time of sale, ASEC Cement held 46.5 per cent of ASEC Minya Cement and 55 per cent of ASEC Ready Mix. Qalaa and its subsidiary National Development and Trading Company (NDT) together own 70 per cent of ASEC Cement.