Lafarge In China - Chongqing Lafarge Cement Co., Ltd. Case

As one of the top 500 multi-national companies and the largest building materials manufacturing enterprise, Lafarge Group took the lead in entering into China in 1994. So far, it has successfully established 14 joint-ventures including 4 cement companies, and the total investment was over 400 million USD. To better understand the back－ ground of the Group, the first chapter makes a brief introduction to Lafarge .Why did Lafarge 'take risk' by entering China in 1994 and is it profitable to invest in China's cement Industry? To answer this question, Chapter Two of the case gives a detailed analysis of Chinese cement Industry.Lafarge has benefited a lot from the investment in both northern and southern part of China, but it is now shifting the investment to the western part of China. In Shi Chuan and Chong Qing alone, there are 4 projects with 2 large cement plants included. What is the intention of this shift? Chapter Three provides the answer to the question.Lafarge Chong Qing Cement Co., Ltd. is the latest joint-venture set up in China. How did Lafarge manage to run the company? Chapter Four answers this question in three paragraphs. The history of the Chinese partner (Chong Qing Cement Plant) is reviewed in the first paragraph, the pre-integration of the joint-venture is described in second paragraph, and in the third paragraph, wherever possible it has been recounted using the managers' own words, the initial challenges that the joint-venture encountered, the change process and the results achieved, the key factors that contributed to the success as well as the future plans for change, particular emphasis is given to human resource issues.The last Chapter points out the deficiency of the case study.By studying this case, one may benefit from it when running a joint-venture in China.