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Finedoor has signed a definitive agreement with a local sponsor to form a new joint venture company in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The new company, Quarry Tec Industries, which will operate from Dubai, is strategically placed to service the construction, recycling and quarrying industries in the Emirates and wider Gulf region. Under the new agreement the new chairman, prominent local businessman Ali Ahmed Bin Huwaidi, will work with leading UK quarry and recycling solutions company, Finedoor, to offer p

For the first time in 130 years, FLSmidth, a Denmark-based supplier of equipment and services to the global minerals and cement industries, has promoted a non-Dane to its executive leadership team. Peter J. Flanagan has been selected to serve as a member of group executive management, and as executive vice president of FLSmidth’s newly-formed Non-Ferrous Division, which provides advanced minerals processing technologies, systems and solutions

Irish building materials group CRH's positive development in turnover and results from the first half of 2011 continued throughout the year, says the group's annual report. Following a 7% turnover increase in the first six months, turnover increased by 4% between July and December and by 5% over the entire year to €18.081 billion. According to CRH, the exceptionally good weather conditions and consequently higher sales in the first and fourth quarters of 2011, as well as the average increase of 2% in sales

Sandvik Mining has unveiled its new $50 million(€39 million) operation at Heatherbrae, a plant that will employ 750 Hunter area residents when it reaches full capacity. The Swedish company will provide equipment mainly for the Hunter's mining and construction industries from its new 16-hectare site. The business will include 28,000m² under cover and will be operated by 600 employees and contractors. Parliamentary Secretary and Junior Climate Change Minister Mark Dreyfus officially opened the plant. Sandvik

The British Aggregates Association (BAA) has won its latest legal battle against the Aggregates Levy and been awarded costs but an increase is still on the cards. The European Union General Court in Luxembourg decreed that the state aid-approval granted to the levy by the EU Commission in 2002 was illegal and annulled it. BAA lawyers Herbert Smith are studying the judgment and its implications in fine detail. Quarry operators who are concerned about how the judgment might affect them are advised to contact

Higher waterproofing levels and greater durability are promised by Holcim’s new Supercem range of concrete and cement products.

French company Fabemi has launched Vertitherm, an insulating concrete block for use in the supporting walls of individual houses or small apartment buildings. According to the company, Vertitherm includes cell insulation to achieve RT 2012 energy performances for low-energy use buildings and “is easy to install.”

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.

A Finnish concrete element company has developed a new concrete slab for intermediate floors. Parma says its product incorporates heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems as well as the required floor tilt. The firm says the new intermediate floor solution also uses thinner hollow core slabs outside wet rooms. A room’s height increases by 10cm with the new thinner slab.

High in the French Pyrenees lays the world's largest talc quarry. Claire Symes visited Rio Tinto Minerals' Trimouns quarry to find out more

Mention talc, and most people would think of talcum powder but the soft mineral is actually essential to the manufacture of a huge number of items used on a daily basis. Many plastics, paints, foods, medicines, cosmetics, ceramics and paper, to name just a few products, all have talc as a central ingredient - but where does it come from? For over 100 years a signific

Increasing demand for high quality aggregate has seen a major investment in a state-of-the-art Polish quarry. Patrick Smith reports. What has been described as the most productive and modern quarry in Poland has started production. When fully operational, the quarry near the small town of Tlumaczów, will be capable of producing up to 2.4 million tonnes of material each year. The Tlumaczów Melaphyre Quarries (Tlumaczów Gardzie and Tlumaczów Wschód) are two melaphyre deposits located at the village of Tlumacz

Construction work for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sotshi, Russia is boosting demand for aggregates from Russia's Karelian region

The wide Karelian forests in north-eastern Russia hide several high-quality aggregates deposits and until recently the roads markets have been the main customers for this material. But due to the quality, these valued aggregates are to play a significant role in the construction of new infrastructure 2000km away.

Karelia-based OOO "Karelprirodresurs" has previously main

In the famous French wine-growing region of Bordeaux, the Colas Sud Ouest-owned company, Sarrazy, is using a Hitachi super-long front ZX350LC-3 excavator on two different sites. In Naujac-sur-Mer, the machine digs to a depth of 5m, removing 70,000tonnes of raw materials from beneath the man-made lake each year. At a second location in Queyrac, which processes 30,000tonnes of aggregate annually, it excavates to a depth of 9m.

Switzerland's Grob Kies may be a small quarry operators but the company's heritage proves that even SMEs can lead the way on setting environmental standards. Claire Symes reports. Think of Switzerland and peaceful images of cows with bells grazing lush pastures against a back drop of snow capped peaks may come to mind. While this may be the image presented to tourists, Switzerland still has a growing construction market with a need for raw materials.

Transferring technicaland environmental knowledge about concrete to the contractor, client and specifier is an important task for the sector, according to the BRMCA'S Martin Hardwick Concrete has very good environmental credentials despite its high energy intensity requirements at the time of manufacture. But while this is well known in the industry, the concept is not so well understood in the wider construction industry or by construction clients.
Drawing together both the technical and environmental ben

Scan and Save Health and safety - as well as operational and cost efficiency - are being radically improved, thanks to more sophisticated ways of understanding blast geometry. ABE takes a look at MDL's Quarryman system. Traditional working practices and techniques for assessing rock burdens provide only rough estimates of the actual rock face burdens. This means blasting has been associated with a poor health and safety record through dangerous rock fly incidents and varying efficiency.

Rising sea levels and changing weather patterns mean that construction and maintenance of coastal defences is becoming essential on some coasts in Europe. ABE takes a look at the complexities of supplying rock to meet the needs of these demanding projects. Dymchurch on the UK's south coast is an extreme example of the need for sea defences but it is not unique in Europe. The land around Dymchurch lies 1.7m below sea level and a breach of the crumbling sea wall would inundate an area with a 5km radius around

Selecting the right drilling equipment and tools plays a key role in determining overall quarry productivity and efficiency. Claire Symes reports. Estimates suggest that drilling and blasting operations can account for up to a third of the total operational costs of some quarries, so maximising the efficiency is important. But the cost of choosing the wrong equipment can be significant and will also impact on the quality of the aggregate and performance of the whole quarry.

Developments in hydraulic breaker technology means the latest units offer better reliability and more power than ever before. ABE looks at how these changes are influencing the European quarrying sector. Increasing numbers of quarries have moved from drill and blast to using hydraulic breakers for primary extraction over the last decade. But is this being driven by environmental considerations or is uptake growing mainly because breaker technology is improving? According to industry experts, it is a combina

Dragline mobility For removing overburden and opening up a new area of an extraction operation, the dragline is one of the most efficient tools available. Mike Woof reviews their development. Draglines date back to the start of mechanised earthmoving with the first steam-powered machines appearing at the start of the 20th century. They have been used successfully in quarrying operations since they first emerged onto the market and larger machines are still used in some applications.