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Spanish cement company Cementos Molins posted a profit of €50.8 million in 2015, a rise of 65% compared with the previous year.

The company’s consolidated net turnover was up 21% at €637.8 million.

The rise in net profit has been attributed to better results in Spain, and although the company continues to produce losses in the Spanish market, it has managed to reduce them from €27.7 million in 2014 to €13.1 million in 2015.

EBITDA for local markets was double at €12.5 million.

In international

State cement company, Semen Baturaja, has reported net sales of IDR 1.46 trillion (€100.31 million/US$109.20 million) in 2015, up 20.2% from IDR 1.21 trillion a year earlier.

Comprehensive profit from continuous operations was at IDR 354.18 billion, up 5.4% from IDR 335.95 billion generated in 2014.

Gross profit was at IDR 493.57b while costs of goods sold rose 15.7% to DR 967.66 billion.

Liabilities as of end 2015 were at IDR 319 billion compared to IDR 2.9 trillion a year earlier.

Assets rose

Jizzakh Cement Plant will launch new production facilities by September 2016.

The investments in the project will total US$35.8 million (€32.75 million).

As well as setting up the new mills, the project includes construction of six warehouses, four of which, with a combined capacity of 5,000tonnes, have already been built.

The plant's output will total up to 260,000tonnes of cement/year after work is completed.

An India-based unit of conglomerate Emami Group, Emami Cement, has started works on its INR 5 billion (€66.48 million/US$72.67 million) facility in the Burdwan District of the local state of West Bengal.

The development on land provided by West Bengal Industrial Development Corp (WBIDC) comprises a cement plant of 2 million tonnes per year and a coal power plant of 10MW. The new facility is expected to generate employment for 500 people.

The Semayata Dimension Stone Factory in Ethiopia is now producing granite tiles and slabs, with an annual capacity of 240,000m² of tiles and cut-to-size slabs.

Located at Wukro in Ethiopia's Tigray region, the factory was built on 3.7 hectares of land, and it has a three-storey building and warehouses.

About ETB 400 million (€17.06 million/US$18.65 million) was spent by Ayiga Trade & Industry, the owner of Semayata, to build all of the facilities, quarrying, and granite processing technology.

The Spanish railway network operator Adif has awarded the contract for the supply of ballast to be used on Spain's high-speed railway network, at a total of €4.6 million.

The contract was divided in several lots which were offered to several companies, including Benito Arnos (€1.5 million) and the temporary consortium made up of Porfidos Internacional de Alhama and Porfidos del Mediterraneo (€1.3 million).

The objective of this contract aims at keeping the levels of ballast on the tracks at the optimu

According to the Russian State Statistics Service, the country's enterprises produced over 25.19 million m³ of concrete in 2015, down 15.6% from 2014.

The Central Federal District was the leader with 9.30 million m³ (-16.6%); the Volga FD was the second (3.68 million m³, -24%), and the Southern FD was the third (over 3.5 million m³, +10.4%).

As much as 3.06 million m³ of concrete was produced in the North-Western FD (-24.2%), 2.62 million m³ in the Siberian FD (-7.7%); 1.29 million m³ in the Urals (-

Magna Tyres Group has further expanded its global sales team with the appointment of Christophe Cantou as sales manager for the region South France.

He has over 15 years of sales experience in the tyre industry and has worked for various well-known tyre companies. He will be working alongside Peter Schreudering.

“Magna Tyres Group is still growing significantly and to keep up with the rising demand, expansion of the Sales team was necessary” says Hein de Wind, sales director of Magna Tyres Group.

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Astec Industries reported fourth-quarter 2015 sales of US$215 million, down 10.2% on the previous year.

Domestic sales increased 5.7% to $160.3 million for the period from $151.6 million in the fourth-quarter of 2014, but international sales decreased 37.8% to $54.7 million during the period from $87.9 million for the fourth-quarter of 2014.

For 2015, net sales for the year were $983.2 million compared to $975.6 million for 2014, an increase of $7.6 million, and the domestic sales increased 10.4% to $

Portuguese cement company Cimpor recorded losses in 2015 of €71.2 million, compared to a €27.2 million profit in 2014. The firm’s turnover also fell by 6.1% in the same analysed period to €2.492 billion.

Cimpor’s management said the company’s 2015 trading figures reflected the slowdown of developing economies where it operates, notably Brazil. Measures to increase profitability are being used, bosses say, such as the cancellation of production in plants which are under performing, and the sale of concre

Hope Construction Materials, a leading UK independent supplier of construction materials, has unveiled 48 state-of-the-art rail wagons, developed in partnership with VTG Rail UK. The vehicles were officially launched at an event at the iconic Hope Works cement plant in Hope Valley, county Derbyshire, England with the ribbon cut by Under Secretary of State for Transport Andrew Jones MP.

An investigation has begun into a collision involving a passenger train and an aggregates train in county Leicestershire, England. The Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) said at around 10.27am on 14 February 2016, the 10.20am East Midlands Trains service from Leicester to York was in collision with a conveyor boom projecting from an aggregates train standing in Barrow-on-Soar sidings (some Network Rail documents refer to the sidings as Mountsorrel sidings).

Keenly awaited new crawler excavators from two leading global OEMs hit the market in late 2015, with another leading manufacturer promising innovative new crawler tractors at bauma 2016. Guy Woodford reports.

New loading models on the market are said to offer the perfect combination of proven reliability, high productivity and low operating costs.

With a maximum operating weight of 29.7tonnes and powered by a 178kW Cat C7.1 ACERT EU Stage IV emissions standard engine, the new Caterpillar 330F hydrau

Hauling equipment, both articulated and rigid dump trucks, is active worldwide in quarries and on earthmoving projects.

On Pulau Tekong Island in the Malacca Straits, off the coast of Singapore, local contractor Kok Tong Construction Group (KTC Group) is leading the earthmoving work for a huge land reclamation project using a fleet of machines from Volvo Construction Equipment.

Covering an area of 24.43km², Pulau Tekong is the largest island off the coast of mainland Singapore, and the Singaporean go

Keestrack’s new Destroyer 1113 crusher has been deployed interchangeably by a Danish company in its recycling processes.

The intermediate version of the track-mounted impact crusher has a secondary screen unit, and is operated by construction and civil engineering company, Kim Vind Maskinstation & Entreprenør, which was founded in 2001, and which has developed into an efficient service provider in the coastal region of Western Denmark, centred around its head office in Årre.

The company offers the re

Simon Trahair-Davies, partner at Stephens Scown, assesses the implications of a recent UK High Court decision. Shortly before Christmas, 2015, a decision of some significance was handed down by the High Court, being the first time that court has considered the Environmental Liability Directive 2004 and its implementation in detail. The case concerned Llyn Padarn lake in Snowdonia in North Wales where an angling society (the Seiont, Gwyrfrai and Lyyfni Anglers’ Society/SGLA Society), had issued a notice to t

On 2 December, 2015, the European Commission released its much expected new Circular Economy Package.

It was presented as even more ambitious than the previous package from July, 2014 withdrawn by the Juncker Commission. What should the aggregates industry expect from it?

The package consists of an Action Plan, an Implementation Plan and four legislative proposals, in particular proposals amending the Waste and Landfill Directives. The Action Plan sets out a number of existing and new initiatives to b

Hitachi Construction Machinery (Europe) (HCME) CEO and President Moriaki Kadoya has spoken of his company’s ambitions to be the biggest selling OEM in Europe. Aggregates Business Europe Editor Guy Woodford spoke to him to find out more about the HCME masterplan for European success.

Moriaki Kadoya is quick to pinpoint which models will help HCME achieve its Number One in Europe sales goal.

“Hydraulic crawler excavators are our core product and key to our success,” he says. “It’s a product group which

Superior Industries, the US-based manufacturer and global supplier of bulk material processing and handling systems, has developed new technology said to speed up one of the most time-consuming steps in portable plant installation. Known as Level Assist, the new option automatically levels a plant once the machinery is raised to a desired height.

Historically, owners and operators tediously adjusted cribbing and jacks until a level plant was achieved. With Level Assist, once the plant is in its operating

AGG1 visitors will get a first look at McCloskey International’s latest version impact crusher, the I44R, in Nashville, US on 22-24 March this year. The latest version I44R combines crushing, screening and recirculating to provide seamless production.

AGG1 is seen as the perfect opportunity for McCloskey International to introduce the new features and benefits of the I Series impact crusher line, particularly well-suited for aggregate and concrete recycling applications. The I44 and I54 crushers have als