Breedon Aggregates is to purchase Hope Construction Materials for £336 million, it has been announced.

It is understood the acquisition will create the UK's largest independent building materials group.

Breedon's Chairman, Peter Tom, said: "We're creating a vertically-integrated business with one of the country's largest cement plants, nearly 60 quarries, more than 200 ready-mixed concrete plants and around 750m tonnes of mineral reserves and resources – together with access for the first time to the rail-fed sector of the market."

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In addition, Hope's Chairman Amit Bhatia will join Breedon and hold a large stake in the business.

"Under Amit's leadership, Hope has delivered an outstanding performance over the last three years and has become a formidable competitor in the UK market," Tom continued.

"Together we will be an even stronger business, complementing one another geographically, operationally and culturally."

Founded in January 2013, Hope has over 160 operational sites including one of the UK's largest cement plants.

It also operates a national network of 152 concrete plants, four cement deports (three with blending facilities, five aggregates quarries, four aggregates depots and an aggregates wharf.

In the last 12 months, Hope created over £285m selling 1.6m tonnes of cement, 4.7m tonnes of aggregates and 2.3m cubic metres of concrete, generating a pretax and interest profit of £37m.

The acquisition is conditional upon the approval of the UK competition and markets authority and is expected to be complete in summer 2016.

(LM/CD)