Lafarge to invest up to 2b euros in Russia

France's Lafarge, the world's biggest cement maker, plans to invest up to two billion euros (2.8 billion dollars) in Russia in the coming years, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Monday.
"At a time of incredible economic difficulties the Lafarge company has begun to build a cement factory in the Kaluga region. The investments of the Lafarge group should reach one to two billion euros in the years to come," Putin told a conference of foreign investors.
The factory in the Kaluga region south of Moscow will join plants in Moscow and Chelyabinsk in the Urals, which employ 2,000 workers and produce 3.6 million tonnes of cement per year, according to Lafarge's website.
The company had also announced plans in 2008 to build factories near the southern cities of Rostov and Krasnodar but dropped them in 2009 due to a fall in demand, the Russian news agency RIA-Novosti reported.