Heidelberg Materials

Heidelberg Materials lists Israel among its countries of operation, in the Africa-Mediterranean-Western Asia group area. Hanson Israel has been part of the group since the acquisition of August 2007 and produces aggregates, asphalt and ready-mixed concrete, and the page names the Electra Tower in Tel Aviv, the Israeli Supreme Court building and Teddy Stadium in Jerusalem among its reference projects. It mentions neither the occupied West Bank, nor Nahal Raba, nor any divestment.

Heidelberg Materials reported a first-half 2026 margin on its result from current operations before depreciation of 23.4%, against 24.2% a year earlier, and narrowed full-year guidance for the result from current operations to EUR 3.40-3.65 billion, from EUR 3.40-3.75 billion. Chairman Dominik von Achten said the company had generated 'strong momentum in the second quarter' in an environment that remains geopolitically and economically very challenging.

Heidelberg Materials tried to sell the quarry in 2018 after criticism of it, and in that same year the plan to expand it went to the Israeli planning authorities in the occupied West Bank. The sale agreement signed in 2020 is contingent on approval of that plan and on a permit to renew quarrying, on Human Rights Watch data. Yesh Din and residents petitioned on 15 July 2025 to rescind the approval, which enables quarrying to resume near the Palestinian villages a-Zawiya and Deir Ballut. The court dismissed the petition in May 2026; an appeal followed in July 2026.

The Network of Critical Shareholders filed counter-motions in April 2026 rejecting the proposed appropriation of the 2025 balance sheet profit, and put a statement to the annual general meeting of 13 May 2026 covering a German supply chain law complaint over a planned cement plant and limestone quarry in the Kendeng mountains of Central Java, climate reparations, a Pakistani farmers' compensation claim, operations in occupied Western Sahara through the subsidiary Ciments du Maroc, and expansion in Turkey. Palestine was not among the issues it raised.

Heidelberg Materials posted a record 2025: revenue of EUR 21.5 billion, up 1%; result from current operations of EUR 3.4 billion, up 6%; adjusted earnings per share of EUR 12.41, up 4%; free cash flow of EUR 2.1 billion. It completed the second tranche of a three-year, EUR 1.2 billion share buyback on 1 December 2025, acquiring about 2.1 million shares for around EUR 400 million and cancelling them on 29 January 2026, with a third tranche to start after the annual general meeting.

Hanson Israel obtained approval on 4 July 2025 to expand the quarry by roughly 97 dunams, and told the Jerusalem District Court on 15 August 2025 that extraction had stopped because reserves were exhausted and that further delay would cost it millions in damages and cause supply shortages in construction. Heidelberg Materials told taz that no resumption of activities was planned and the Nahal Raba complex remains closed. taz reported that a February 2025 post on its subsidiary's own Instagram account appeared to show concrete supplied to the Ulpana Katzrin school project in the occupied Syrian Golan.

The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre logged an allegation that Heidelberg Materials was pursuing approval to expand the Nahal Raba quarry in occupied territory while stating publicly that operations had ceased. The company told reporters it had implemented management processes to ensure respect for human rights throughout its supply chain.

Heidelberg Materials 'actively pillages Palestinian quarries on appropriated Palestinian lands, providing material' used to build and expand illegal Israeli settlements, said Al-Haq, the Palestinian human rights organisation, welcoming the company's inclusion in the UN database. Al-Haq records that OHCHR reviewed only 215 of the 596 businesses submitted, says delays in updating the database 'serve to shield Israel', and calls on states to divest from the settlement enterprise and on home States, Germany in this case, to sanction listed companies.

Hanson Israel Ltd appears at entry 76 of the UN settlements database published on 26 September 2025, and its German parent Heidelberg Materials AG at entry 78, both for the use of natural resources, in particular water and land, for business purposes. Neither had been listed in the two earlier editions. Seven companies were moved in the same update to the annex for enterprises no longer involved in listed activities; Heidelberg Materials was not among them.

Heidelberg Materials called the listing 'not justified' on its own website the day the database was published, saying it 'does not reflect the current situation'. It repeated that Hanson Israel ceased all activities at the Nahal Raba quarry and the associated asphalt and ready-mix concrete plants in 2023, that the entire complex remains closed, and that Hanson Israel operates no facilities in the occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem.

Heidelberg Materials told the UN human rights office on 24 September 2025 that Hanson Israel had 'ceased all operations' at the Nahal Raba quarry, asphalt plant and ready-mix concrete plant in 2023, that the entire complex 'remains closed', and that it operates no active facilities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem. It argued that the listing 'does not reflect the present situation' and invoked its UN Global Compact commitments. The letter says nothing about a sale of Hanson Israel or of the quarry.

Who Profits, the Israeli research centre, records that Hanson has quarried Nahal Raba since 1989, and Heidelberg Materials holds it through Hanson (Israel) Ltd at 99.98%. The site covers around 515,000 square metres of land belonging to the Palestinian villages of al-Zawiya and Rafat, confiscated and allocated for the quarry, and includes an asphalt plant and a concrete plant licensed until November 2026. It also records the Israeli Civil Administration approving a 2025 expansion adding roughly 100,000 square metres of quarrying on adjacent village land, on a page valid to 16 September 2025.

Heidelberg Materials conceded three things in a letter of 14 July 2025 to the Israeli research centre Who Profits. The Nahal Raba complex is 'closed since November 2023', but Hanson Israel applied for an extension of the quarry licence several years ago and the expansion was granted by the authorities 'in principle', on fulfilment of certain conditions. An internal review 'identified only a limited number of instances' in which trucks carrying its materials to settlements were observed, and it says none have been identified since 2020.

Heidelberg announced in 2019, under public pressure, that it would sell the Nahal Raba quarry, 'but without mitigating the damage caused or seeking effective redress', and said in a letter dated August 2020 that a buyer had already been found. The End Cement campaign, run by activists in Heidelberg drawing on the Al-Haq and SOMO research, says material extracted just beyond the Green Line benefits Israeli construction and settlements, while Palestinians nearby face restrictions on access to their land and pollution.

Hanson Israel, acquired in 2007, operates facilities in the occupied West Bank including an aggregates quarry south of Elkana that exploits occupied Palestinian natural resources, and supplied materials to settlement construction including the Barkan settlement expansion. Heidelberg Materials sits on the BDS Divestment Shortlist in the American Friends Service Committee's register, whose economic activism section records four institutional decisions and goes no further: KLP in June 2015, PFA Pension in December 2015, SEB's no-buy list on 12 June 2017 and Sampension in October 2017.

The International Court of Justice found Israel's continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory unlawful, held settlements and their associated economic activity contrary to international law, and set out obligations on states in relation to trade and dealings with settlements.

Human Rights Watch told the company in May 2020 that it had seen new evidence indicating Hanson was continuing to deliver building materials from the Nahal Raba quarry to settlements that year, contradicting the company's October 2017 statement that Hanson Israel does not sell building materials to Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Senior staff had said in 2016 that Hanson was actively seeking to sell the quarry and was considering a joint venture with the Palestinian Authority, and the chief executive later told the annual meeting that it intended to sell.

Al-Haq, the Palestinian human rights organisation, and the Dutch Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations documented the land confiscation at Nahal Raba, the extraction of non-renewable Palestinian natural resources for the Israeli market and the environmental effects on neighbouring communities, and argued that the conduct amounts to pillage. They submitted the research to the UN human rights office in support of the database listing that followed five years later.

Dust from the quarry reaches neighbouring Palestinian communities, the land it stands on was confiscated, and materials from it were provided for use in Israeli settlements, in SOMO's own summary of the joint research with Al-Haq.

PFA Pension, Denmark's largest pension fund, removed HeidelbergCement from its investment universe in December 2015, citing violation of basic human rights in conflict with UN Global Compact principles 1 and 2, and illegal activities in relation to the occupation of the West Bank.

KLP, Norway's largest pension fund, divested from HeidelbergCement and Cemex in June 2015, stating that the operations are associated with violations of fundamental ethical norms and provide a strong incentive to prolong a conflict.