Quarry Products

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.

By investing approximately US$300 million (€267.40 million), China-based cement producer Hongshi Holding Group is to set up a cement production plant in Vientiane province, Laos.

The plant is designed with a daily cement production capacity of 5,000tonnes or 2 million tonnes/year.

A loan agreement worth around PLN 1.93 billion (EUR 461.36 million/US$515.27 million) has been signed by the major Polish bitumen producer Lotos Asfalt, to complete the finance for the company’s EFRA project to construct a delayed coking plant in Gdansk.

A consortium of institutions are to supply the finance. These are: BGZ, Bank Pekao, Bank Zachodni WBK, PKO Bank Polski, Societe Generale, Bank Millennium, Powszechny Zaklad Ubezpieczen and Powszechny Zaklad Ubezpieczen na Zycie.

The repayment date is

HeidelbergCement, the German cement and concrete manufacturer, has announced that its Romanian subsidiaries, Carpatcement Holding, Carpat Beton and Carpat Agregate, will be merged and consolidated under the name HeidelbergCement Romania.

French quarrying company Carrières Ballastières de Picardie (Holcim) is to extract gravel at a privately-owned 35hectare site in Condren, France.

The company will mine the site for an estimated 10-12 years, and will use waterways to transport its production to clients.

It previously sought to carry out the extraction at a site owned by the municipality, but it was refused permission.

Antoine Duclaux is the new chief executive of Lafarge Central Europe and heads up the future country cluster of Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia.
Until recently, he was senior vice-president strategy at Lafarge’s headquarters following earlier appointments as managing director at Lafarge Emirates Cement, Dubai, and Lafarge Cementos, Honduras.
He has been part of the Lafarge team since 2002, when he started as vice-president of corporate audit.

According to a statement, the Angola-based Kwanza Sul Cement Factory is planning to raise its output capacity from 4,200tonnes/day to 4,500tonnes/day either in short or medium term.

The company has been in operation since February 2014, and it is producing cement under the Yetu brand from its facility built on a site of 14,000 hectares, the statement further added.

Egypt-based Amreyah Cement has awarded a turnkey contract to Christian Pfeiffer Maschinenfabrik.

Under the deal, the company will be required to deliver and build two identical horizontal ball mills with an effective grinding length of 6.75m and a diameter of 3.4m and a 3m-long integrated drying chamber.

Work on the construction is due to start soon and is scheduled for completion within a year.

In order to rebuild the devastated north-eastern region of Nigeria, Lafarge Africa has committed to accelerate the ongoing NGN 100 billion (US$502.77 million/€458.1 million) expansion of cement manufacturing company AshakaCem's new and existing plants and coal-fired captive power plant.

AshakaCem's production capacity will increase from 1 million tonnes to 4 million tonnes.

Meanwhile, Lafarge Africa is also interested in collaborating with a Presidential Initiative for the North-East (PINE) for redeve