Martin Marietta has announced it will buy the assets of Lehigh Hanson located in the western United States for $2.3 billion. Martin Marietta is a supplier of heavy building materials and aggregates, which is mixed with other minerals in order to form concrete or mortar.
Included in the acquisition are 17 active aggregates quarries, two cement plants with related distribution terminals, and targeted downstream operations. The assets, which are located in California and Arizona, are in areas that are primed for growth and should require increasing amounts of construction materials in order to meet the needs of their population growth trajectories.
In the shorter term, the company appears to be capitalizing on the expected boom in infrastructure due to the Biden Administration’s proposed $1.7 trillion spending bill.
While the bill is likely to change between now and when it is passed by Congress, the part of the bill which is receiving the most bipartisan support is the section which supports hundreds of billions of dollars in spending on roads and bridges, which is the most relevant to these new assets.