Heidelberg Materials is planning a roughly $200m expansion of a cement plant near St Petersburg, Bloomberg has reported.
The move comes despite the company’s earlier statement that it had frozen further investment in Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.
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Bloomberg, citing an unnamed source, said the German building materials group plans to carry out the project through its local subsidiary.
Heidelberg told Bloomberg the expansion is being financed locally and is linked to environmental and carbon dioxide requirements.
“It is a self-financed project of the local subsidiary related to environmental and CO2 constraints,” Heidelberg said in an emailed statement to Bloomberg.
The company added that the work “does not constitute an investment by Heidelberg Materials.”
The planned expansion differs from Heidelberg’s earlier public position on Russia.
Soon after the war in Ukraine began, chief executive Dominik von Achten wrote on LinkedIn: “We feel a deep responsibility for our local workforce who has nothing to do with this attack. But – as a consequence of the war – we decided to completely freeze all further investments in Russia.”
Heidelberg later repeated that position in response to B4Ukraine, a civil society coalition that has pressed companies over their Russia exposure.
According to its website, Heidelberg has operated in Russia since 2001.
It runs three cement plants in the country with a combined annual capacity of about 4.7 million metric tonnes.
The company says its Russian customers are private ready-mixed concrete and precast producers, mainly serving regional residential construction.
Since the start of the war, more than 1,000 companies have left Russia or reduced operations in Russia, according to the Yale School of Management.
Heidelberg rivals Holcim AG and CRH Plc are among them.
In August 2023, Russia’s prosecutor general’s office filed a lawsuit against Heidelberg’s local subsidiaries seeking to seize their shares.
The case was withdrawn weeks later.
Regulatory filings show Heidelberg’s Russian operations generated about $195m in profit between 2022 and 2024.
That was equal to around 3% of the group’s total net income.
As those profits cannot be transferred to Germany, the company can either keep the funds in local bank accounts or spend them within Russia.
