Titan’s 20-Plant Roll Out Attests Carolinas’ Fluidity

Titan America in Norfolk, Va., announced last month that it had secured sites for more than 20 ready mixed concrete plants along the Interstate 95 corridor

CP Staff

Titan America in Norfolk, Va., announced last month that it had secured sites for more than 20 ready mixed concrete plants along the Interstate 95 corridor in eastern North Carolina. An expansion plan calls for sites to open over a 2007-2009 schedule, boosting Titan Mid-Atlantic’s current portfolio of 54 ready mixed plants; Roanoke Cement; fly ash processor and marketer Separation Technologies; five Virginia and North Carolina cement rail terminals; and, a Norfolk import terminal.

This initiative bolts on very well to our Virginia coastal concrete operations. As these markets have been the most vulnerable to cement imports, it will also provide stability to the entire state, says Titan Mid-Atlantic Business President Patrick Borders. We will also consider [any] acquisition opportunities at reasonable values.

The expansion coincides with a handful of transactions that have made North Carolina one of the ready mixed industry’s most fluid markets. Ownership of Raleigh’s Ready Mixed Concrete Co., with 75 Carolinas and Virginia plants, has changed hands twice in the past two years. Control shifted in November 2004 from members of the founding Turner family to a private equity firm-backed management group; in March 2006, the business was acquired by Cemento Argos, a Colombia powder producer that recently entered North America. RMC Carolina Materials, anchored in Greensboro, N.C., and Greenville-Spartanburg, S.C., was assimilated with the rest of RMC USA Inc. last year into Cemex USA.