The board of directors of Lafarge Corp. approved in July an agreement with the company's majority shareholder, Lafarge S.A., to manage and operate certain North American cement and construction materials businesses that Lafarge S.A. recently acquired from Blue Circle Industries for U.S.$1.4 billion. With this agreement, Lafarge Corp. will own or manage more than 12 million tons of annual cement capacity in the United States, more than any other cement producer; the company is already Canada's leading producer. In total, Lafarge's combined North American cement sales should exceed 20 million tpy.

The assets that Lafarge Corp. will operate include: five cement plants — Calera, Ala., now finishing a modernization program designed to more than double its capacity, Harleyville, S.C., Ravena, N.Y., Atlanta, Ga., and Tulsa, Ok.; a slag grinding facility in Sparrow's Point, Md., with more than 900,000 tons of sales; 11 cement terminals, seven of which are on water and another being a recently completed deepwater terminal in Charleston, S.C., with 90,000 tons of storage; 13 aggregate-producing pits and quarries in Georgia and Alabama; and 61 ready-mixed concrete plants and several concrete block operations, which produce a combined 3.5 million cu yd of sales per year approximately. A majority of the operations are situated in the Southeast, a fast-growing market where Lafarge previously had a limited presence.

The management contract has an initial terms that expires on Dec. 31, 2002, and is renewable for one-year periods thereafter.