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Swedish construction company NCC has reduced its CO2 emissions by 12,000tonnes as asphalt recycling reached record levels in 2011.
Some 80% of NCC's asphalt plants are adjusted to asphalt granules, which are made from recycled asphalt and which accounted for 14.7% of asphalt production in 2011.

According to reports, the Voronezh Court of Arbitration in Russia has introduced a monitoring procedure at Pavlovskgranit due to the claim of Atlantic, which acquired the company's debt from Sberbank Capital.
The reports say the debt is €101.49 million and the court will appoint an interim trustee on 11 May, 2012.

Ritchie Bros Auctioneers will sell more than 630 used and unused heavy plant equipment and trucks at its new regional auction site in Donington Park, County Leicesterhsire, UK on 17 April.
The unreserved public auction will feature a variety of industrial items, including more than 180 excavators as well as 70 dumpers, 43 tandem rollers, 39 telescopic forklifts, 14 wheel loaders, backhoe loders, flatbed trucks, site dumpers and dump trucks.
“Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen the number of lots for the A

It has emerged that Portuguese group Semapa has presented a project to the Portuguese Securities and Exchange Commission (CMVM) to create a holding company that will consolidate, under its umbrella, stakes owned by Portuguese groups in the national cement company Cimpor.

Doosan Infracore Construction Equipment has extended its range of attachments for excavators with a new line of heavy duty buckets and quick couplers manufactured in Europe.

Intended for all markets in Europe, Middle East and Africa, these can be mounted quickly and easily, providing cost-effective and productive solutions for a number of applications, including digging, trenching, loading, mining and quarrying, says Doosan.

Keestrack is introducing the new green electric alternative for its Explorer range of classifiers, ECO-drive.

“This is not to ride on the ‘green’ wave. It has a lot of added value for the environment but also on the cost efficiency of the machine,” says president Kees Hoogendoorn.

Eugene Lyons has assumed the role of vice president sales and marketing, mobile crushers and screens at Sandvik Construction, enabling him to utilise his extensive industry expertise and experience on a global basis.

Lafarge unveiled its pod, a 360° Experience Room that uses surround-sound technology to allow visitors to experience what life in a quarry is like at the Ecobuild trade show in London earlier this year, and now it will be used for the first time at a series of open days the company is running at its Mountsorrel granite quarry, County Leicestershire, England, on 6, 7, 12 and 13 May.

Xylem, a global water technology company focused on addressing challenging water issues, has launched a new mobile app for its online Xylect product selection tool.

Xylect Mobile provides customers with quick and easy access to detailed product information from Xylem’s Flygt brand, from any location, simply using a smartphone.

Breedon Aggregates, the UK’s largest independent aggregates business, has announced plans to raise approximately £15 million (approximately €18 million) to fund future acquisitions.

It has unveiled a conditional placing of 83,333,335 ordinary shares of no par value (the Placing Shares) with new and existing institutional investors and directors, to raise the money before expenses (the Placing).

While the main purpose of quarrying is to provide high quality products for a wide variety of sectors, the industry now offers so much more.
Road building and other construction work in modern society means there is a voracious demand for aggregates for asphalt and concrete, after water the second most consumed commodity globally by volume.

With 2012 only a few weeks old there are signs of increasing optimism in the aggregates
industry across Europe for the coming 12 months.

The new Cat 777G off-highway truck replaces the 777F and is said to deliver greater levels of production and fuel efficiency as well as enhanced safety, operator comfort and service convenience in the 91tonne class. The 777, first introduced by Caterpillar in 1977, has proven to be a workhorse for mining and large earthmoving customers, says the company.

Mexican cement firm, Cemex, suffered a 40% sales drop in Spain in the last three months of 2011, compared to the same period of the previous year. The company said demand had been particularly hit in the Levante and Catalonia regions of Spain. It believed the overall sales drop was due to weak levels of investment in civil engineering, the “almost complete disappearance” of residential construction, and the poorer macroeconomic indicators for the country.

Hardly a day goes by without the words recession or credit crunch hitting the headlines. Many question how many of these headlines are really media hype but how much will the instability of the banking world affect aggregates production in Europe?

There is no doubt that 2009 was a difficult year for the aggregates industry and the first of the full year reports seem to suggest business was down a third on 2008 levels. Nonetheless, there seems to be a lot of optimism that things will gradually improve accross Europe in the coming 12 months. This optimism is fairly widespread too and is coming from quarry operators, construction equipment producers and building materials consumers alike. However, it does seem to come with the universal caveat of the ne

As 2011 draws to a close, it is interesting to reflect on the aggregates industry, and how it is coping in the current economic climate. In the past few weeks, I have reported as companies have rolled out their third quarter results, and many of the major players are more upbeat than may have been expected.

Almost three years ago permission was granted for a huge extension to an existing quarry in a rural area. It would produce 30million tonnes and secure the site's future for the next 50 years or so. Soon after permission was given for the expansion, I visited the site to prepare a report for Aggregates Business Europe.

While best practices and national legislation may vary across Europe, one thing that is clear is that the industry as a whole is trying to tackle the safety issues that blighted the industry in years gone by. In the past, the quarrying sector was one of the most dangerous industries to work in, which is why it was so good for an aggregates company to have been picked out as a top performer in this year's European Agency for Safety and Health at Work European Good Practice Awards. Tarmac's Western Region sco

If the outside world does not perceive the efforts made by the quarrying industry to improve biodiversity and use resources sustainably - is that the industry's fault or down to preconceptions in society? Whatever the answer, the problem will not be resolved without the aggregates sector being proactive and actively engaging with stakeholders, policy makers and local communities