Quarry Products

Breedon Aggregates, the UK’s largest independent aggregates business, has acquired Nottingham Readymix, saying this fills an important gap in Breedon Aggregates’ coverage of the East Midlands [region of England].

Cemex is launching Hidratium, its second global ready-mix concrete brand, which has self-curing properties. Already sold in France, Ireland, Mexico, Poland and Guatemala, it is ready to be produced in the Czech Republic, Germany, UAE, Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, Spain and China.

Vicat achieved a 12.5% rise in consolidated sales in 2011 to €2.27billion. Cement was up 10.1% to €1.14billion and concrete and aggregates brought in €818million, up 14.2% year-on-year. Vicat says it achieved robust business growth in France, Turkey and Western Africa, and strong growth in Kazakhstan and India thanks to acquisitions and investments under the Performance 2010 plan.

Lafarge’s energy consumption from waste rose to 15% last year, compared to 11.7% in 2010. The French group has spent several years trying to reuse low-cost waste including old tyres, plastic products, oil and biomass, as an energy resource, with a dedicated subsidiary in charge of collection and processing.

Holcim is to completely replace conventional fuels with waste when making cement at its production plant in Sehnde-Höver near Hanover, in Germany. Holcim mainly burns plastic waste at the plant, which produces about 1million tonnes of cement per year.

Lafarge is axing 460 jobs as part of a reorganisation of its worldwide corporate division. The French building material group says 90 of the job losses will be in France where it has set up a voluntary redundancy scheme to minimise compulsory redundancies.

Cemex, in partnership with contractor Copisa Group, has completed the first stretch of a bridge that will connect the Port of Barcelona with Barcelona airport in Spain.
The bridge, which crosses Llobregat River, is expected to be completed later this year, and Cemex provided over 30,000m³ of different types of specialty ready-mix concrete. The three pillars needed high-strength concrete to support a road 300m long and 30m wide, and the material also had to flow through the intricate framework, be auto-comp