April 20, 2009

St. Lawrence Cement now flies under Holcim banner

IAN HARVEY

correspondent

An iconic Canadian brand is changing its name.
St. Lawrence Cement — a fixture on the Canadian construction landscape since 1953 — will now be known as Holcim (Canada) Inc., as the company positions itself as a global player with an eye towards pursuing P3 contracts.

CEO Paul Ostrander says the name change reflects the reality of the times, that St. Lawrence has long been part of the Holcim brand and that with a higher profile it will be better able to compete going forward.

Related companies, Dufferin Aggregates, Dufferin Concrete and Dufferin Construction in Ontario, and Demix Agrégats, Demix Béton and Demix Construction in Quebec will not change their names but their logos and colours will change to reflect the parent company’s image.

“We’ve been working on this for some time,” says Ostrander who took over as CEO Jan. 1 this year after starting his career at Dufferin Construction in 1974 and being appointed vice-president of St. Lawrence Cement in 1994.

“Holcim bought out the minority shareholders in 2006 and made the decision to change the name to Holcim in 2007. We’ve talked to a lot of people about it, including our employees.

“It’s good because now when Holcim is reflected on the Dow Jones Industrial Index it will tie back to us and the same with the Holcim Awards.”

To put it bluntly, he says, St. Lawrence was a great brand in parts of Canada, but wasn’t seen as a tier-one supplier nationally, as Holcim is. The name change positions the company as a world leader in the construction supply business, Ostrander said.

Holcim has about 3,500 employees in Canada, with annual revenues of $1.5 billion. The Swiss-based Holcim Ltd. group of companies holds majority and minority interests in more than 70 countries around the world. It had revenues of $26.3 billion in 2007.

Ostrander likened the change to last year’s marriage of Vanbots Construction with Carillion Canada, whose parent company is based in England.

Looking forward, he says, the construction sector is going to have a bit of a bumpy path, with private sector construction taking a hit. “I think the word really, is uncertain,” he says.

“We’ve got a lot of work in the bucket, which will continue to carry us forward, but there’s no doubt we’ve lost about 50 per cent on the private sector side [with] malls, condos and other ICI projects not being built, Stelco not investing and the automotive sector being down.”

One positive is that energy costs have dropped and that will help, he says, since cement consumes a lot of energy in the manufacturing process.

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