People

US: Fortera has appointed Eric Olsen to its board of directors. Olsen is the former chief executive officer (CEO) of LafargeHolcim.

He started his career in the field of mergers and acquisitions at Deloitte & Touche, Banque Paribas and was one of the managing partners of Trinity Associates for six years. He studied business at the University of Colorado and holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from HEC international business school in Paris. He joined Lafarge Group in 1999 and was a member of its executive committee from 2007 until its merger with Holcim in 2015 to form LafargeHolcim. He then worked as the CEO of LafargeHolcim until April 2017 when he resigned following a review into a conduct of a cement plant in Syria. Legal charges of financing a terrorist organisation were dropped by French authorities in 2019.

Fortera is a materials technology company that has developed a recarbonation process that uses captured CO2 and mineralises it into a secondary cementitious material. In March 2021 it signed a collaboration agreement with Lehigh Hanson to build a carbon capture and storage (CCS) system at the producer’s 0.8Mt/yr integrated Redding Cement plant in California.

Germany: Bosch Rexroth has appointed Holger von Hebel as its chief financial officer (CFO) and the Director of Industrial Relations with effect from 1 October 2021. He will retain his position as head of the Mobile Hydraulics business unit. Von Hebel succeeds Markus Forschner, who will join the board of management of Robert Bosch as CFO and chief performance officer in 2022.

Von Hebel studied industrial engineering in Berlin and Karlsruhe. He joined the Bosch Group in 1990 as a trainee. After serving in a range of management positions in Germany and other countries, he became the commercial director of Switzerland-based Bosch subsidiary SIG Pack International in 2004. In 2005, von Hebel was given additional responsibility for finances, controlling and IT at the former Packaging Technology division of Bosch. Afterward, he became chairman of the divisional board of management of Bosch Solar Energy. Von Hebel has worked in a variety of areas at Bosch Rexroth since 2013 when he became the commercial director of the former Industrial Applications business unit. He has been the managing director of the Mobile Hydraulics division since 2017.

Bosch Rexroth supplies drive and control technologies to a variety of industries including the cement sector.

India: Dalmia Bharat Group director Jai Hari Dalmia died on 8 July 2021 at the age of 76.

Dalmia’s father Jaidayal Dalmia founded the company in 1939 before Dalmia and his brother Yadu Hari Dalmia later took charge of the business in the 1980s, according to Forbes. Together they built the cement division up from one cement plant to 13 cement plants in 2020.

Dalmia held a Bachelor of Engineeringdegree in electrical engineering from Jadavpur University and a Master's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champagne. He had more than 47 years of experience across various industries including refractories, sugar and cement. Dalmia was involved in research and development and had personally received several patents for the company's businesses.

Zimbabwe: Lafarge Cement Zimbabwe has appointed John Stull as a non-executive director. Previously he worked as the chief executive officer of Holcim Philippines from 2018 until 2021. He is currently the Area Manager - East, South Africa & Indian Ocean for Holcim.

Stull, an American national, holds over 29 years’ experience with Holcim Group having joined it in 1992 as the operations manager at the Alpena plant in Michigan, US. Since then he has worked in a variety of executive roles around the world. He holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Akron and an Advanced Management Degree from Harvard University.

Germany: Beumer Group has appointed Jörn Fontius as the managing director of its Germany-based subsidiary Beumer Maschinenfabrik. He succeeded Norbert Stemich in the role in May 2021. Stemich has now moved to the Product Business division of the group.

Fontius joined Beumer Maschinenfabrik in 2013 and managed corporate strategy before becoming the head of global supply chain management. In late 2019 he became the president of the airport division of Beumer’s US subsidiary. Prior to working for Beumner, Fontiuswas a member of the management board of the Bundesvereinigung Logistik, a logistics network.