France: new MD of Cerib

France’s concrete industry research centre (Cerib) and the national Portuguese civil engineering laboratory (LNEC) have announced signing of a cooperation agreement. Under the deal, they will pool their European research programmes and exchange information to create synergies. Work on concrete durability in corrosive environments is already being jointly carried out.

Nick Allen has been appointed Volvo Construction Equipment Division, Volvo Group UK’s managing director. He joined the dealership in 2010 as chief financial officer having previously worked within Volvo CE’s European sales and marketing function. At the end of 2013 he took on the role of interim managing director for the division replacing Val Ledden who was promoted within the group.

The board at Spanish cement company, Cementos Molins, has approved the appointment of Julio Rodriguez in the post of managing director, replacing Juan Molins Amat who stepped down in order to become first vice-president of the board.

Rodriguez was until now executive vice president of operations at Schneider Electric and a member of the company’s global management committee.

The shareholders at Cementos Molins also approved the appointment of Andrea Kathrin Christenson as an independent board member.