Rinker Group Ltd. announced late last month the acquisition of four concrete plants, a quarry and other aggregates assets from JR & Sons Ready Mix in
CP STAFF
Rinker Group Ltd. announced late last month the acquisition of four concrete plants, a quarry and other aggregates assets from JR & Sons Ready Mix in St. George, Utah. The transaction includes an on-site ready mixed and aggregate operation servicing Coral Canyon, a 5,800-lot residential undertaking of Phoenix-based SunCor Development Co., with other properties in smaller markets around St. George. Members of the Robinson family, previous owners, will remain with the plants, running them as bolt-on properties of the Rinker Materials platform in Las Vegas, about 120 miles to the southwest. St. George lies along the Interstate 15 corridor linking Salt Lake City and Las Vegas.
The JR deal follows Rinker’s mid-January closing on Walling Sand & Gravel in Salem, Ore., netting a ready mixed plant, quarry, and asphalt production and paving business. The properties serve Oregon’s capital city market and will be integrated into Rinker’s Pacific Northwest platform in Portland, where the company is a top concrete and aggregate player owing to operations inherited with its fall 2002 acquisition of Kiewit Construction Materials. With a population of about 370,000, Salem is the state’s second largest city behind Portland, and has been growing at around 1.5 percent annually.
In the east, Rinker has shored up its Knoxville, Tenn., business with the acquisition of three-plant Union Concrete Co, Inc. The buyer has a strong presence in Knoxville, whose prospects over the next five years are bolstered by significant commercial construction activity, and the Johnson City, Tenn., market farther east. Through American Limestone and three smaller deals, Rinker has built an eastern Tennessee platform since 2000. The Union acquisition follows late-2006 deals for Greenback Crushed Stone, a Loudon County, Tenn., independent; and Nally & Haydon, with one concrete block plant and three quarries in southeastern Kentucky.