Johannesburg - As part of its southern Africa expansion strategy, Pretoria Portland Cement
[JSE:PPC] on Tuesday announced the acquisition of three aggregate quarries from Quarries of Botswana for 50 million Pula ($6.8m).
New quarries in Gaborone, Francistown and Selebi-Phikwe would expand PPC's footprint and make PPC's Aggregates division the largest aggregate producer in Botswana, it said.
"Various alternatives were considered to increase PPC's aggregates presence in
Botswana. Both Gaborone and Francistown are forecast to be major growth nodes in
Botswana and this was an obvious choice to develop our aggregates business further.
"Acquiring the assets of an existing business made more sense than embarking on a greenfields expansion," said PPC's executive for the Aggregates division, Riaan Redelinghuys.
The investment would see PPC's aggregates division increase its total capacity from three million to about four million tonnes per annum and gain approximately 100 employees.
PPC CEO Paul Stuiver said: "We recently communicated to our investors that we are pursuing expansion opportunities in other parts of Africa; however this acquisition shows we are still considering any good opportunities to expand our local business."