Australia: Struggling cement and construction materials giant Boral has announced that it will merge its construction materials and cement divisions. The building materials group recently axed 700 jobs but a spokeswoman for Boral said that the only worker to lose their job out of the merger would be the current, long-serving construction materials manager Murray Read, who has been made redundant. Joseph Goss, a senior executive in the cement division of Lafarge North America, has been appointed to manage the newly merged division.

A week after announcing the 700 job cuts in January 2013, Boral upgraded its underlying first-half profit forecast to US$53.2m from US$35.8m. However after restructuring costs, the company suffered a first half net loss of US$25.9m. It said that it expected conditions to remain challenging in the building products market. The result was dragged down by US$78.8m worth of significant items, including impairment charges relating to the suspension of clinker production at Waurn Ponds in Victoria and first half restructuring and redundancy costs.