Displaying items by tag: UK

UK: Tarmac’s Women in Cement group has held its first networking event with colleagues from across the company’s cement and lime business coming together to discuss key industry challenges and opportunities. The event was attended by team members from the businesses supply chain and logistics, customer service, health and safety and cement plant teams. It included a range of discussion topics and presentations, from personal protective equipment (PPE) and welfare facilities to profiling role models and opportunities to attract more women to pursue careers at Tarmac and in the wider construction industry.

“It has been fantastic to bring together colleagues from across the business to share their experiences and continue our work to collaborate and drive positive change. We’re looking forward to building and broadening activities across Tarmac and continuing to encourage people from all age groups, genders nationalities and ethnicities to be part of the debate and help to define opportunities for development and progress,” said Johanna O’Driscoll, Tarmac’s finance director.

The Women in Cement group is one of a number of diversity and inclusion initiatives across Tarmac. The company has partnered with organisations including the Taylor Bennett Foundation, Skillforce and the Career Transition Partnership, which all focus on supporting people from diverse backgrounds into jobs.

UK: Breedon Group has appointed Amit Bhatia as its non-executive deputy chairman with immediate effect. Bhatia joined Breedon’s board as a non-executive director in August 2016, following the group’s acquisition of Hope Construction Materials. He is a director of Abicad Holding, a shareholder in Breedon, and vice chairman of Queens Park Rangers FC.

UK: Spain’s Cemengal is supplying a 0.5Mt/yr Plug & Grind Vertical mill to Tarmac’s Dunbar cement plant. Work started in April 2018 and the project is expected to be completed by July 2019. The unit follows the Plug & Grind product line’s modular format and it includes a FLSmidth OK Mill 37.3. The mill will be used to grind clinker at the cement plant although the subsidiary of CRH may also use the mill to grind slag. The order is Cemengal’s first Plug & Grind Vertical in Europe.

Nigeria: Dangote Cement has appointed former Xstrata CEO Mick Davis as a non-executive director alongside Cherie Blair, a lawyer and the wife of ex-UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. The new board appointments are targeted at strengthening the company’s board, according to Bloomberg. While the company did not explain the reason for such high-level appointments, it has been reported that the company is planning to relaunch its bid to be listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE). According to Bloomberg, Dangote has already approached investment bankers to discuss a potential UK listing.

Davis ran Xstrata, the mining giant now owned by Glencore, for 12 years to 2013. He is now the chairman of Macsteel and the CEO of the UK’s ruling Conservative party. Cherie Blair’s other board positions include Renault SA.

The rumours were confirmed yesterday when the UK’s Breedon Group announced its acquisition of Ireland’s Lagan Cement. The price was Euro527m, which Breedon will finance with a combination of a new loan, extended credit and an equity placing. The assets it will gain include a cement plant in Kinnegad, nine active quarries, 13 asphalt plants and nine ready-mixed concrete plants.

Breedon said that its strategy is to continue buying businesses in the heavyside construction materials market. At a stroke, once the deal completes on 20 April 2018, it becomes an international company. From the cement perspective it gains a new 0.7Mt/yr plant in central Ireland and a terminal in Belfast, UK. The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) wasn’t mentioned in Breedon’s press release on the purchase but it seems unlikely that the competition body would have much to say on the transaction. Lagan Cement does hold ready-mix concrete (RMX) plants, aggregate and asphalt assets in Northern Ireland but these are far away from Breedon’s operations in mainland Britain. That said, the CMA did force Breedon to sell 14 RMX sites when it bought Hope Construction Materials in 2016. Generally speaking, Breedon’s enlargement reduces the diversity of the UK cement industry on the smaller end leaving only Quinn Cement, with operations on both sides of the border, as the country’s sole remaining single site clinker producer.

Aside from geographical expansion, becoming an international building materials company may offer Breedon Group some security from the UK’s exit from the European Union (EU) (so called Brexit). Breedon will join CRH as the only two cement producers with production facilities in both the UK and Ireland. The strategic significance of the position Breedon and CRH are in geographically may arise from whatever deal is reached between the EU and the UK and the significance of the UK’s only land border with the EU. LafargeHolcim is nearly in this club with its plants in England and Northern Ireland and plenty of the other local producers straddle the UK-EU border with terminals or production facilities elsewhere. Yet, in an uncertain Brexit negotiation, having kilns on both sides of the line might come in handy once (or if) the politicians make a decision.

Although, if Liam McCaffrey, the chief executive officer of Quinn Industrial Holding, is to be believed, then Brexit will have little impact at all other than (low) tariffs in a worst case scenario. He said to local press that although damage to the construction industry might arise in the UK from a prolonged recession, the UK’s housing shortage and reliance on imported building materials would probably see it through. That point about a possible financial downturn is important to Breedon Group, given the new debt it will be taking on to pay for acquisition. This is something that will be familiar to Breedon’s competitor Cemex. It is still paying off the debts from its acquisition of Rinker in 2007.

Breedon has decided to delay the release of its interim results from mid-July to September 2018 to allow time for the integration of Lagan into the group. Its sales and earnings may dwarf those from 2017 that it described as ‘one of the most productive years’ in its history. In the meantime congratulations are in order for Breedon Group for ensuring that the UK cement sector is never dull.

Ireland/UK: Breedon Group has acquired Lagan Group for Euro527m. The deal will be financed from a new loan, extended credit and an equity placing. The purchase will see Breedon Group enter the Irish market as it takes control Lagan’s production assets including a cement plant in Kinnegad, nine active quarries, 13 asphalt plants and nine ready-mixed concrete plants. The deal will complete on 20 April 2018.

“Lagan represents a unique opportunity to enter a growing market with immediate scale and excellent opportunities for expansion. It significantly strengthens our cement offer, adds to our mineral and downstream resources, brings us a bitumen import/export business and adds real weight to our contract surfacing operations,” said Paul Ward, Breedon’s chief executive.

Following the acquisition of Lagan, Breedon Group will operate two cement plants, around 70 quarries, 40 asphalt plants, 200 ready-mixed concrete and mortar plants, nine concrete and clay products plants, four contract surfacing businesses, six terminals and two slate production facilities. The group will also employ nearly 3000 people. It says its strategy is to continue growing organically and through the acquisition of businesses in the heavyside construction materials market.

Ireland: Liam McCaffrey, the chief executive officer of Quinn Industrial Holdings does not expect Brexit to slow growth. He said that the most damage could arise from a prolonged recession in the UK, although he though it was unlikely, as reported bythe Irish Times newspaper. He added that the UK has a housing shortage and it relies on imports for building materials. In his estimation the worst-case scenario would be a tariffs on building materials but these, if they happened at all, are expected to be low.

The building materials producer and owner of Quinn Building Products reported that its turnover grew by 7.4% year-on-year to Euro209m in 2017. Its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBTIDA) increased by 31% to Euro23.9m.

“Despite the significant macro-economic challenges posed by Brexit, we continue to invest, grow sales, innovate and drive margin growth. Encouragingly, volume growth trends from 2017 are continuing year to date in 2018 and, at this point, we are firmly on track to deliver our fourth successive year of strong earnings growth,” said McCaffrey.

UK: Cemex has launched its digital customer integration platform, Cemex Go, in the UK. The system allows the company and its customers to will be used in real time to manage order placement, live tracking of shipments and invoices and payments for the company’s main products, including bagged and bulk cement. Cemex Go was introduced in Mexico and the US in late 2017.

UK: A report by the CDP looking at some of the largest multinational cement producers says that they need to double their emissions reductions in order to meet the 2°C global warming target outlined in the Paris Agreement. The report, entitled ‘Building Pressure,’ analysed 13 large cement companies including LafargeHolcim, HeidelbergCement and Cemex from data in a questionnaire. However, two major Chinese cement producers, Anhui Conch and China National Building Materials, and other producers including Siam Cement and Dangote Cement did not respond.

The report argues that regulation is the key driver to helping the cement industry reduce its emissions, through tightening building regulation and a rise in low carbon cities. However, it concedes that the sector faces a technology barrier, as ‘significant innovation’ is still required. “With potential pressure coming from multiple sources, including down the value chain in the form of building and city regulation, cement companies need to invest and innovate in order to avoid impending risks to their operations and the wider world. This may see m challenging at first, but every year it is delayed, the cost becomes greater, so management teams, regulators and investors need to think long term. There is a solution - cement companies just need to invest properly in finding it,” said Paul Simpson, the chief executive officer of CDP. The CDP report assessed companies across four key areas aligned with the recommendations from the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). Indian companies toped its league table in part due to better access to alternative materials from other carbon-intensive sectors. They also benefited from

newer cement plants driven by high market growth in the region compared to older plants in Europe. Dalmia Bharat, Ambuja Cement and Cementos Argos were the best performing companies on climate-related metrics and Taiheiyo Cement, Cementir Holding and Asia Cement Corporation ranked lowest.

UK: Samson Materials Handling has appointed Karl Woodhouse as its sales director with effect from February 2018. Woodhouse’s career in materials handling started almost 27 years ago with B&W Mechanical Handling, which became Samson Materials Handling in 2013. Samson Materials Handling, a subsidiary of Aumund Group, sells products in the bulk materials handling sector.