11.8 billion euros, of which around 7 billion in cash: that is what the sale of the US arm of the Walloon lime giant Lhoist raised. The estimated wealth of the Berghmans Family, who own the company, has now risen above 12 billion euros. This likely makes them the richest Belgians of the moment. That is, of course, unless you know different.
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Billion-dollar US deal makes Berghmans Family Belgium’s richest, probably
Colin Clapson
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Lhoist has finalised a massive sale: it has offloaded its profitable North American division. The buyer is the American building materials group Martin Marietta. The entire deal is netting the family many billions of euros.
It’s such an incredible amount that the ‘Richest Belgians’ List, which tracks the wealth of the country’s industrial families, has placed the Berghmans-Lhoist scions right at the top, even above Eric Wittouck, a descendant of the family behind the former sugar conglomerate Tiense Suiker.
From Liège to the world
It is the culmination of a long industrial history dating back to the 19th century. In 1889, a certain Hippolyte Dumont, a young man of modest origins, acquired the Ampsin quarry, not far from Liège (Wallonia). He soon added a limestone quarry a little further afield and steadily expanded his business.
Dumont died shortly after the First World War, but by that time the family had already gained an ambitious new member in the form of his son-in-law, Léon Lhoist. In the 1920s, Lhoist set up a lime factory under his own name and soon expanded it into France.
These were not the easiest years for business, with the economic crisis of the 1930s and the Second World War, but afterwards Lhoist was finally able to start building again. The company grew into a global player which, in the 1980s, even crossed the Atlantic to make acquisitions and open factories in the US.
This international growth can largely be attributed to Léon’s grandsons, Jean-Pierre Berghmans – Baron Berghmans since 2005 – and his cousin Léon-Albert Lhoist, who steered the lime giant in the right direction from the mid-1970s onwards.
Today, Lhoist, headquartered in Limelette (Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve - Wallonia), is a group operating in more than 20 countries and employing over 6,400 people.
Row with the Rochefort Trappists
Due to the discretion surrounding the business family, Lhoist is not a source of juicy media stories. Baron Berghmans and his associates are in fact best known for being patrons of numerous cultural initiatives and organisations, as well as of various academic chairs.
Perhaps the most ‘controversial’ issue to make the news is the conflict the company had around 2013 with the Trappist abbey of Rochefort. At the time, the monks feared that Lhoist’s deepening of a limestone quarry would dry up the source used for their Trappist beer. Lhoist ultimately had to back down against the Trappist monks: its licence was revoked.
Although the company had been a fruitful collaboration between the Berghmans and Lhoist branches of the family for some 50 years, the Berghmans descendants bought out their cousins in 2022, as financial daily De Tijd reported at the time. Consequently, for several years now, there have been no Lhoists on the board of the company of the same name.
With the recent sale of the US arm, the Berghmans family is now also realising part of the value concentrated within the firm. Baron Berghmans, however, is keen to emphasise that the “ambition and dedication” to the remaining activities remain unchanged.