FTSE 100 building materials group CRH has said that full-year development activity in 2012 totalled over 0.6bn euros, helped by 18 acquisition and investment initiatives undertaken in the second half.

The company's Americas division made 12 purchases worth €256m in the second half, which included its Materials unit adding around 515m tonnes of aggregates reserves.

Meanwhile, the European division completed six transactions worth €119m during the last six months of the year.

As such, development initiatives since the end of June amounted €375m, taking the full-year total to €630m; with net deferred consideration of around €130m, cash spend for the year was around €500m.

"The €0.6 billion of development activity during 2012 reflects CRH's long-term, value-based approach to developing our balanced portfolio," said Chief Executive Myles Lee.

"The Materials transactions bring strong asset-backed resource positions and, when combined with existing operations, provide significant opportunities for vertical integration. In the Products segment, the 2012 acquisitions reflect our focus on repair, maintenance and improvement (RMI) and sustainability segments and on the optimisation of production networks in core regions, while our 2012 Distribution additions also reflect an RMI emphasis as well as the ongoing development of new channel opportunities in European distribution markets."

BC

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