News

Spanish building materials firm Uralita’s losses rose by 18.1% to €18.9 million in Q1 2015, compared to the same period of 2014, due to its financing costs rising to €14.6 million. At the same time, the company’s ebitda decreased by 1.9% to €9.1 million and sales totalled €130.3 million after rising by 1.8%. Sales abroad accounted for 76% of all sales, while sales in Spain decreased by 13%. Sales of Uralita’s Interiors division rose by 2% to €117.2 million, and revenues of its pipes division rose by 1% to €

PPC, South Africa's largest cement manufacturer, recorded 9.2% sales growth to US$377.91 million (ZAR 4.5 billion) in the six months to March 2015. But it wasn’t all good news for the company, as its net income dropped from $7.73 million (ZAR 494 million) to $4.29 million (ZAR 274 million), followed by another decline in earnings per share before one-time items from ZAR 0.96 to ZAR 0.60 on a year-on-year basis.

Meanwhile, PPC is planning to generate an additional profit of $6.26 million (ZAR 400 millio

Lafarge, the French cement giant, has received seven expressions of interests for the acquisition of two of its assets in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, India ahead of its merger with Switzerland-based Holcim. Lafarge has been directed by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) to sell its cement plant in Sonadih and a grinding unit in Jojobera to relatively small companies with an installed capacity of at least 5% of their total capacity.

The bids for Lafarge’s Indian assets were made by six foreign and

Finning, the exclusive UK Caterpillar dealer, has now supplied its second remote control machine to metals and minerals specialists Harsco. The Cat 316E Excavator can be fully operated from up to 80 metres away. The remote control functionality is one of a number of bespoke features Finning has delivered for Harsco, due to the intense conditions of the application.

Harsco first came to Finning with the proposition of a remote control machine at the end of 2013. The task: providing an operator with the ab

Plans for an eight-hectare expansion of Lafarge Tarmac’s Mountsorrel granite quarry in county Leicestershire, central England, have been approved.

IronPlanet, the world’s leading online auction platform for buying and selling used construction equipment, has been demonstrating its flexible service approach through a partnership with DTP Terrassement in Gabon, Africa.

DTP Terrassement – a division of Bouygues Construction that specialises in infrastructure projects – was commissioned by the Gabon Ministry of Public Works, Highways, Construction and the City to renovate and upgrade Gabon’s main national highway – the 47km Ndjole-Medoumane highway loc

Finland-based Graphic Concrete and its UAE partner Versatile are targeting the Middle East market with a patented technology product that supplies a range of prefabricated concrete surfaces. With technology from Graphic Concrete, designers and architects can create new environments by designing surfaces that can be used for walls, facades and pavement slabs. Graphic Concrete’s four main product lines are GCCollection, GCPro, GCArt&Design and GCSmooth, and its solutions do not require cladding, said to make

The Norwegian Public Roads Administration (Statens vegvesen) has announced that asphalt paving of national roads and county roads in the country’s Eastern Region has begun. In all, 850 kilometres of national and county roads in Østfold, Oslo, Akershus, Hedmark and Oppland will be paved with asphalt in the summer of 2015. The cost amounts to €91.73 million (NOK 770 million). Additionally, Statens vegvesen will spend €13.57 million (NOK 114 million) on road markings for national and county roads in the Easter