CRH showing interest in hunt for Buckeridge Group of Companies

CRH describes itself as the world’s leading global diversified building materials business.

CRH may seem like an unlikely suitor for Buckeridge Group of Companies to those familiar with the building materials industry because of its market position where the Perth-based group operates.

But nevertheless, DataRoom has learned the global building materials operator that recently bought the Australian-listed Adbri for $2.1bn is in fact lining up to take a look at the business.

Adbri was always considered to be an unlikely buyer of BGC given its presence in the West Australia market, where it is a major manufacturer and distributor of cement. As a result, the thinking has been the ACCC would likely disallow a deal. But market experts say that it’s not a complete impossibility for CRH, as the owner of Adbri, to buy the business.

CRH describes itself as the world’s leading global diversified building materials business.

Working on a sale for the $800m BGC building materials portfolio is investment bank Macquarie Capital.

Other suitors include Seven Group Holdings, Cement Australia and a Japanese group, which sources have suggested could be Mitsubishi Chemical Group, keen to secure its clinker supply contracts.

The empire of WA billionaire Kerry Stokes, who owns most of the listed diversified company Seven Group Holdings, now controls the country’s largest building materials provider Boral.

Suggestions are the BGC unit on offer may be earning between $60m and $80m annually, which could put a price tag of $600m to $800m on the operation, based on its aspirations to achieve a price of 10 times its earnings.

BGC was up for sale in 2022, but buyers were unwilling to take on the family-owned company’s loss-making home-building unit, which has since been hived off.

Analysts say building materials are attractive because of the lack of housing supply.