HeidelbergCement launches “FOX 2013”

HeidelbergCement has announced the launch of its new three-year financial and operational excellence programme: “FOX 2013”. During the next three years, the company aims to achieve total cumulated cash savings of €600 million. Therein included are P&L effective financing and operational cost savings of €200 million in 2013.

“The continued and consistent focus on cash and cost is a key success factor of our company strategy,” explains Dr. Bernd Scheifele, CEO of HeidelbergCement. “Building on our strong cost and efficiency track record in recent years, we have bundled several cash and cost saving projects in our new three-year financial and operational excellence programme ”FOX 2013”.

The main focus of the programme is on global efficiency improvement for the core activities: aggregates and cement. For cement production, HeidelbergCement wants to achieve a sustainable reduction of energy cost through the OPEX programme (Operational Excellence). In the aggregates business, the company aims to achieve sustainable margin improvements and best practice through comprehensive global benchmarking and portfolio optimisations.

Dr. Scheifele: “We are already the global market leader in aggregates by sales volumes, but now we also want to become the most efficient aggregates producer in the world. In addition, we plan to further reduce our financing cost and have already laid the basis for this in November 2010 with the reduction of the credit margins for our €3 billion revolving credit facility. On top of that, we target annual savings from purchasing and an optimisation of our working capital, largely derived from DPO improvements in 2011. With our “FOX 2013” programme we will further strengthen our competitiveness in order to benefit even more from an improving global market environment for building materials.”

The new “FOX 2013” programme targets cash savings of €200 million in 2011, €160 million in 2012 and €240 million in 2013. In 2011, €100 million are targeted to be achieved from a one time optimisation of working capital, largely derived from DPO improvements. Savings from purchasing, which are partly price and partly index based, are expected to amount to €74 million in every single year. P&L effective operational and financing cost savings are planned to increase from €35 million in 2011 to €110 million in 2012 and €200 million in 2013. They include the price-based savings from purchasing.

Read the article online at: https://www.worldcement.com/europe-cis/11012011/heidelbergcement_launches_%E2%80%9Cfox-2013%E2%80%9D/