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Turkish cement producer Oyak Cimento Grubu's turnover in the first nine months of 2014 increased by 18% to TRY 1.10 billion (€396.77 million/US$500.31 million) while its net profit was up by 84% to TRY 335.6 million.

The group is expecting the sector to have a growth of 5% in 2015. This growth is due to infrastructure and urban renewal projects and the company is expecting the sector to grow by 6% in 2014.

Hope Construction Materials, a UK independent supplier of construction materials, has won the industry’s most prestigious health and safety award, the Mineral Products Association’s (MPA) John Crabbe Award.

The trophy, which was presented to Amit Bhatia, founder and Chairman of Hope Construction Materials, during a ceremony at the impressive 30 Euston Square venue London, is awarded for outstanding excellence in health and safety.

The news comes after Hope reached the milestone of 300 days without an

In the Philippines, businessman Ramon Ang is said to have announced that he is giving serious consideration to the acquisition of Lafarge Republic cement plants.

Ang did not mention if either Eagle Cement or San Miguel were showing interest in buying the local assets of Lafarge.

Ang, who is Eagle Cement's chairman and San Miguel's president, is reported as saying that they are seriously assessing the planned acquisition and it will be a huge transaction if it happens.

The assets that are planned to

Swiss cement manufacturer Holcim recorded a turnover of CHF 14.24 billion (€11.81 billion US$14.77 billion) in the nine first months of 2014, down 4.7% from a year earlier.

On a comparable basis, turnover increased by 3.4%.

Cement volume sales increased by 1.6% thanks to increases in Asia, Oceania, North America, Africa and the Middle East.

The net profit reached CHF 1.16 billion, down 9%. The operating profit reached CHF 1.7 billion, up 2.8%. Excluding non-recurring factors, the operating profit d

The Mineral Products Association’s Health & Safety Conference and Awards 2014 took place at the new location of 30 Euston Square, London, bringing together over 70 organisations, including members, contractors and other key stakeholders from all over of the UK, to celebrate commitment, progress and achievement in health and safety and share best practice.

The theme was Reducing Harm through Leadership and Workforce Engagement.

Overall, the prestigious Awards attracted 150 entries from 37 different org

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has officially switched on the new kiln at the Italcementi cement plant in Rezzato, which has undergone an extensive revamp in the last two years to become one of the top-performing plants in Europe from the production and environmental viewpoints.


"An investment of more than 150 million euro completed just as our company celebrates its 150th anniversary," said Italcementi chief executive, Carlo Pesenti.
"The new Rezzato plant is the best expression of the group’s st

Highlights of Heidelberg Cement’s third-quarter results show that the group had its best operating income since the financial crisis and there have been increased sales volumes in all business lines.
The group says that revenue increased by 4% to €3.8 billion (like-for-like, +7%); operating income improved by 13% to €675 million despite negative exchange rate effects (like-for-like, +19%) and operating cash flow improved and net debt was reduced.
The outlook for 2014 is confirmed and HeidelbergCement says

HeidelbergCement has confirmed it will not buy any of the businesses that must be sold off as part of its rivals' merger.

In a brief statement, the German company told its shareholders it had now stopped looking at the assets being put on the block by its rivals, as it wanted to fortify its balance sheet and put cash into its own projects instead.

Given the importance of cement to developing economies - and Lafarge and Holcim's dominant positions in the market - their merger has come under enormous sc

Lafarge’s third-quarter 2014 figures show that while sales were down 2% to €3,636 million compared to the same period in 2013, they were up 2% like-for-like.
Similarly up 2% like-for-like were EBITDA (down 4% to €887 million compared to Q3, 2013); current operating income (down 5% to €676 million) and net result group share at €218 million (€0.76 per share).
Over the first nine months of 2014 sales were down 3% to €9,636 million; EBITDA was down 2% to €2,042 million (up 4% like for like) and Current opera

The US Department of Energy is allocating a further US$752,000 to the next phase of a four-year research and development project leading to the commercial delivery of Solidia Technologies’ carbon dioxide-reducing cement and concrete.

The project called ‘Utilization of CO2 in High Performance Building and Infrastructure Products’ is co-funded by the US Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory through its Carbon Storage Technology program, and by Solidia Technologies.

The overall goa

The UK-based CPA (Construction Plant-Hire Association) Plant Conference 2014 attracted more than 140 attendees and a host of top level speakers.

CPA member and non-member delegates from hire companies, contractors, industry associations and government agencies were at the recent event in Wyboston Lakes in county Cambridgeshire, England to hear leading industry speakers discuss the ways in which those working within the UK construction plant hire sector can understand and influence the future of the indu

Innovative water recycling, management and filtration solutions are in demand in Europe and further afield, as Guy Woodford reports.

The G:Max gully waste processing plant from CDEnviro is said to have revolutionised the way in which UK wastewater recycling specialist RWR classify waste and recover sand from waste material at their site in Stratford, east London, England.

The West Midlands-headquartered firm, who installed the G:Max plant in January 2013, are renowned at their east London facility fo

LiuGong Dressta Machinery has appointed Howard Dale as new Vice President of Global Sales for Dressta.

Dale joins Dressta with 20 years of construction sales and marketing experience in China and South East Asia. His previous position was as a Shanghai-based Regional Director for CNH Industrial. As Vice President of Global Sales, Dale will be responsible for all aspects of Dressta’s global business including channel management, capacity building, after sales and service operations and expanding the corpo

German manufacturer Deutz is entering into a new partnership with Hitachi Construction Machinery, which will see Deutz engines fitted to wheeled loaders for the Japanese and US markets.

By forging a new alliance with HCM, Deutz has been able to secure a new partner for long-term collaboration in the construction equipment sector.

In April, 2014, the Japanese group started fitting Deutz TCD 3.6 engines to its ZW100 and ZW120 series of wheeled loaders. The cooperation with HCM will allow Deutz to succes

Janne Leppänen from Finland has taken the title of best construction equipment operator at the 2014 Case Rodeo International Final.
The final was held at the Case Customer Centre in Monthyon near Paris, France, and Leppänen was declared overall winner among 42 highly skilled operators representing 15 nations from Europe and Africa.
The Best Team award was scooped by Denmark, thanks to the first-class performance and quality of its drivers, and for the first time a team from Africa (a delegation of three

A new Cemex UK Technical Development Programme has been launched to develop the technical managers of the future.

Six technicians embarked on the first 18-month programme with an orientation dayt Cemex’s National Technical Centre in Southam, County Warwickshire, England.

They met and worked with their individual mentors and existing senior technical managers, as well as learning about the programme, which has been developed in-house and is on-going, allowing the company to develop and extend its own

LiuGong Dressta Machinery has been awarded 2014 Top Chinese Investor in Poland.

The awards ceremony for the 2014 Top Foreign Direct Investors in Poland, which was hosted by Biz Poland Magazine and co-organised by The Polish Information and Foreign Investment Agency; Special Economic Zones in Poland and the Chamber of Commerce of Poland, was held in Warsaw.

The award was evaluated by a judging committee, and the evaluation covered several important aspects such as investment scale; the strategic meanin

Cemex has signed binding agreements with Holcim regarding a series of European transactions originally announced on 28 August last year.

Under the main scope of the transactions between the global cement sector giants, Cemex will acquire all of Holcim’s assets in the Czech Republic and will divest its assets in the western part of Germany to Holcim. In Spain, Cemex will now acquire Holcim’s Gador cement plant (cement capacity of 0.85 million tonnes) and its Yeles cement grinding station (cement capacity

Methods of surveying a quarry have changed greatly in the last few years, making it possible for a quarry manager or specialist to gather information rapidly.

Sophisticated equipment and the use of impressive looking unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) allows quarries to gather vast amounts of information on a frequent basis in a format that can be easily used.

For example, Trimble offers a wide range of surveying solutions including 3D laser scanning, imaging rovers, G

Bruce Engineering has developed a washing plant which it says offers aggregate scrubbing, rubbish removal, aggregate rinsing/sizing and sand production on one 40ft (12m) container-sized chassis.