Martin Marietta Materials, the nation’s number-two aggregates producer, has divested certain West Coast cement operations. The company has entered a definitive agreement to sell its Tehachapi, Calif., cement plant to Unacem Corp., which is the Peru-based parent company of Arizona’s Drake Cement.
With a projected closing by year end, the $317 million cash deal will position Unacem with 1.7 million tons of U.S. clinker capacity, about 15% of the volume in a cement plant fleet spanning Peru, Chile and Ecuador.
Unacem entered the United States in a 2012 deal for Drake Cement and, like its South American sister businesses, has integrated ready mixed concrete operations.
The transaction will allow Martin Marietta to close its latest chapter on California cement production assets. The producer inherited the Tehachapi plant and a sister Redding operation in a 2021 deal for the Lehigh Hanson West Region, selling the latter property to CalPortland Co. the following year.
The companies abandoned a deal for Tehachapi in response to delays from federal regulator review. In 2015, Martin Marietta sold CalPortland the Oro Grande cement plant, a former Texas Industries property acquired the prior year.