Concurrent with a deal for Chicago-based Material Service Corp. (companion item), Hanson Plc announced a $430 million acquisition of a U.K. operator, Civil and Marine Holdings Ltd., specializing in ground granulated blast furnace slag cement and specialty abrasives. Its businesses include Civil and Marine Inc., which in March 2005 opened a 700,000-ton/year-capacity grinding operation in Port Canaveral, along Florida's east coast.

The facility processes Camcem-branded GGBF slag cement and counts among its Florida customers Hanson Paver Products, a five-plant operator known as PaverModule up until a February 2006 acquisition by Hanson Building Products North America. Hanson Pipe & Products' sizable concrete pipe and precast business in Florida would appear another likely Civil and Marine customer. Prospects for integration are even stronger on Hanson Plc's home turf, where the company's concrete businesses last year consumed cementitious materials volume exceeding 2 million tons — a figure C & M approximately matched in GGBF shipments from five U.K. grinding plants and four terminals.