RMC Ewell Inc history

Permission to build was slow in coming, and the first concrete to pave the yard and the loading bay was not poured until February 1931.

Like its counterpart in Great Britain, Ready Mixed of Australia suffered a series of losses until 1946.

Ammentorp's salesmanship produced a pretax profit of £9,000 by 1950, when work began on a new Bedfont plant.

After arriving in England in April 1951, Kelman opened a company bank account and met with John Gauntlett, a corporate lawyer in the firm of Linklaters and Paines, to draw up the papers for the formation of Stirling Readymix Concrete.

With the new funding, Kelman purchased a plant in Liverpool and moved it to Poplar, where operations began in April 1952.

In 1955, Alf Smith returned to Australia and Bryan Kelman was named chairman and chief executive of RMC. A strong proponent of expansion, Kelman aggressively sought mergers with other companies.

Also in 1961, a lawyer named Hermann Warmke joined the company to handle contracts, personnel, and insurance.

In May 1962 the rising cost of operations forced RMC to become a public company.

In 1965 Bryan Kelman decided to accept an offer to work for the Australian firm that had acquired Ready Mixed Concrete of Australia.

Founder Sam Stirling died in 1968 and was buried in his native Australia.

In 1969, the Grange was turned into a technical and training center with Joe Dewar as its first director.

Taking over as chief executive was Stuart Walker, who had joined RMC in 1971 and had most recently been responsible for the group's mainland European operations.

In 1973 Anthony Barber, the Conservative chancellor, introduced an emergency budget designed to slow what he is quoted in The Readymixers as calling the building industry's 'obscene gains.' A miners' strike and the imposition of a three-day work week exacerbated RMC's financial problems.

By 1976 RMC's finances had improved slightly, and the company began to look for other markets and products that were not as dependent on the construction industry.

By the end of 1979, RMC had also bought the Regent Warehouses chain.

By 1982 RMC's profits reached £55 million despite some problems.

In 1986, Jim Owen replaced John Camden as group managing director.

In the summer of 1989, at least 60 people were killed when an RMC dredger rammed a pleasure boat on the Thames River.

In 1993 RMC's German lime and limestone operations were combined with those of the Belgian Lhoist Group in France and the Czech Republic to form a 50-50 joint venture, Chaufourneries de Hergenrath S.A.

In 1996 RMC bolstered its Austrian interests by increasing to 72 percent its stake in Kies-Union, which was then rechristened Readymix Kies-Union AG. That year, Peter Young was named chief executive.

The continuing struggles in Germany led to revenue and profit declines in 1998.

2000: RMC acquires the Rugby Group PLC, the number three U.K. cement firm, for US$1.45 billion.