August 2025

Germany: The RKW Group came second in a study into ‘Germany's Most Sought-After Employer 2018’ by the FAZ Institute and the IMWF Institute for Management and Economic Research. The institutes looked at the 5000 largest companies in the country and scored them by quality, performance, success, sustainability, corporate culture and values.

The RKW Group is a family-owned company headquartered in Frankenthal, Germany and a manufacturer of film solutions for hygiene, agricultural and beverage sectors. It also produces packaging for powdery goods. In addition, the company makes films and nonwovens for medical applications, for the chemical and converting industries as well as for the construction sector.

Previously we’ve finished the year by recapping the major news stories from an editorial perspective. If you’re interested in that approach we suggest you read the trends articles in the December 2018 issue of Global Cement Magazine. Here on the website though we’ve decided to run it by readership figures. So, instead of suggesting what we think you should be interested in, we’re flagging up what you are actually stimulated by. Fortunately, unlike the search engines, we don’t run the kind of content to make one lose faith in humanity. Nevertheless though there are some interesting observations to make.

Top 5 country tags on Global Cement website in 2018

5. Egypt
4. Vietnam
3. Pakistan
2. Philippines
1. India

Firstly, as the list of country tags shows the emphasis from readers is very much on developing economies with strong cement industries. India is the second biggest cement producing country in the world and the others are all major manufacturers in their regions. The Philippines is riding an infrastructure boom, Pakistan is a major exporter of cement and has its own infrastructure growth from Chinese investment, Vietnam is another major exporter and Egypt is the largest producer in Africa. Incidentally, Egypt opened a 13Mt/yr cement plant at Beni Suef with six production lines in 2018. These are places where the action is at in the cement industry.

Top 10 news stories on Global Cement website in 2018

10. Big Boss Cement to launch in the Philippines
9. Dalmia Bharat set to buy Kalyanpur Cement
8. Wonder Cement plant launched in Maharashtra
7. LafargeHolcim to sell US$1.7bn of assets after poor first half
6. Birla Corporation confirms plans to build new cement plant at Mukutban
5. ACC in talks to buy remaining cement business from Jaiprakash Associates
4. LafargeHolcim to close Paris headquarters
3. Global Cement & Concrete Association launches
2. ThyssenKrupp to build new cement plant for LafargeHolcim in Morocco
1. Brisk cement trade reported at Ethiopian-Eritrean border

As for the news stories there are several general trends to note. Firstly, the machinations of the Indian producers fill up four of the top ten positions. We’ve noted the size of the industry but it is also worth remembering the common use of English in that country. Secondly, the world’s largest multinational cement producer, LafargeHolcim receives three mentions. Again, no surprise here. We have shades of the company realigning itself after poor financial results and pointing at developing countries. The closure of the former Lafarge headquarters in Paris ties into the former and strikes a nostalgic note following the merger between Lafarge and Holcim in 2015.

From here there’s one story that we included in our roundup for 2018, the formation of the Global Cement & Concrete Association (GCCA). Readers of the BBC News website would have spotted the GCCA’s head Benjamin Sporton popping up in a feature on cement industry carbon emissions. He’s not long been in the job but this is exactly the kind of advocacy the association should be doing on behalf of the industry.

As for the top news story for 2018, it’s not what we’d have chosen in a round-up, but it sums up the importance of cement to people’s lives. It’s a commodity and where people build things they need it. Normalise relations between bordering countries and cement will flow if it can. Now that’s a goodwill story to end the year.

Enjoy the Christmas and New Year break if you have one.

Global Cement Weekly will return on 2 January 2019

Switzerland: LafargeHolcim has added human resources (HR) and legal representation to its executive committee.

Feliciano González Muñoz, head of HR, has been appointed as a member of the executive committee. A Spanish national, he has worked for more than 11 years in senior HR roles with the company. González Muñoz has a PhD in Law from Universidad Complutense de Madrid and holds an MBA from Instituto de Empresa, Madrid.

Keith Carr, head of Legal and Compliance, has been appointed as a member of the executive committee. A UK national, he joined LafargeHolcim in 2017. Prior to this he was General Counsel for GE Power. Before that he was Group General Counsel & Member of the Executive Committee for Alstom. Carr gained his LLB law degree from Northumbria University and is a qualified solicitor in England and Wales.

Additionally, the group’s Corporate Growth and Performance function will be organised into three Centres of Excellence, which will directly report to the Region Heads. This is intended to lead to a more agile organisation, closer to the markets and providing strong global platforms for sharing best-demonstrated practice. Current Corporate Growth and Performance function head Urs Bleisch will lead the reorganisation but he will step down from his current position on the executive position to do so.

All changes will be effective from the start of January 2019.

Poland: Ernest Jelito, the president of Górażdże Cement, has been elected as the chairman of the Polish Cement Association. He succeeds Andrzej Ptak, president of the Ożarów SA Group, who will leave the post following his retirement at the start of 2019.

Jelito was born in 1958. He is a graduate of the AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków. He originally started to work for Górażdże Group in 1982. From 2001 to 2005 he was the general director of the Górażdże Group. Then for the next 11 years he was the technical director of HeidelbergCement. Since 2015 has been the president of the board of Górażdże Group and its general director.

UK: Susie Farnon has been appointed as the chairman of the audit committee at Breedon Group. It will follow the retirement of David Warr at the end of December 2018. Warr has held the post as a non-executive director since 2008 and during his time on the board he served as chairman of the audit committee. Farnon is Breedon's senior independent non-executive director. Following the appointment of Peter Cornell as a non-executive director in October 2018, the group says it is in the final stages of appointing a second additional independent non-executive director and expects to make an announcement early in 2019.

Germany: Markus Schröder has been appointed as the director of Elogic Filtration. It follows Elogic’s acquisition of Ruhr Montan Environmental (RME) and the incorporation of the company into its Elogic Filtration division. Schröder was the director of RME. Previous to this he was the director of Intensiv-Filter in Langenberg.

Research from the Global Carbon Budget (GCB) this week forecasts that fossil CO₂ emissions from the Indian cement industry will rise by 13.4% in 2018. This is in stark contrast to the smooth mood music from the Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI) last week, which stated that the local industry was on track to meet its commitments towards decarbonisation. So what’s going on?

The situation is akin to the fable about the blind men and the elephant. Both the GCB and the CSI are approaching the emissions of the Indian cement industry from different directions. The GCB is using available data (including data from the CSI) to try and estimate what the CO₂ emissions are. It takes cement production data using a method adapted from a paper published by Robbie M Andrew of Norway’s CICERO Center for International Climate Research in 2018 and then it takes into account the types of cement being produced and the clinker factor. This is then converted into an estimated clinker production figure and this is then converted into a CO₂ figure.

However, the CSI meanwhile actually has direct data from its local members. At the moment these include ACC, Ambuja Cements, CRH, Dalmia Cement (Bharat), HeidelbergCement, Orient Cement, Shree Cement, UltraTech and Votorantim Cimentos. As part of the Getting the Numbers Right (GNR) database it collects production and sustainability related data from its members. However, for reasons of competition, it maintains a year gap before it reports its data. This means that the GCB can report its estimate ahead of the CSI data.

There is nothing to stop the CSI reporting its progress against its targets though. And this is exactly what it has done in India with the recent document outlining progress towards the 2030 targets from the low carbon technology roadmap (LCTR). The headline CSI metric was direct CO₂ emission intensity. According to the CSI, this has fallen by 32kgCO₂/t cement to 588kgCO₂/t cement in 2017 mainly due to an increased uptake of alternative fuel and blended cement production, as well as a reduction in the clinker factor. This is bang on target with its aim of hitting 320kgCO₂/t in 2050 (around 560 kgCO₂/t in 2020, assuming a linear decrease).

The problem is that cement production growth in India suddenly sped up in 2018. Global Cement estimates that India’s cement production is set to rise by 7% year-on-year to 296Mt in 2018 from 280Mt in 2017. Data from the Ministry of Commerce & Industry shows that cement production rose by nearly 16% year-on-year to 244Mt in the first nine months of 2018 from 211Mt in the same period in 2017. Along these lines the Cement Manufacturers Association of India has forecast growth of 10% in the 2019 financial year to the end of March 2019. It reckons that this is the fastest growth in the sector since the industry slowed down in 2011.

India’s per capita cement consumption is low (222kg/capita) and its urban population is also low (around 30%). That’s a lot of cement that’s going to be used as it shifts to developed global rates and already it’s the globe’s second biggest cement market. The CSI was right to get in there eight years ago. Yet, the question now is can CO₂ emissions decrease whilst the market grows? Research in the US suggests that the real reason for emission drops in the 2010s was the economic recession, not policy shifts or changes in the energy mix. If that holds in India then the cement industry will have a hard time reducing its carbon footprint irrespective of the work the CSI has done.

UK: Aggregate Industries UK has appointed Guy Edwards as its chief executive officer (CEO) starting in January 2019. He succeeds François Petry, who was recently appointed Country CEO of Lafarge France and Market Head for France and Belgium.

Edwards holds over 30 years of experience in the construction industry, with 25 years of this in the UK. He is currently CEO for the company’s Aggregates and Construction Materials (ACM) business in the US. Over the years, he has held a variety of senior roles within Aggregate Industries, both in the UK and US. In 2013, Guy served as a UK Executive Committee member responsible for European operations and, in 2014, was named chief operating officer (COO) for the AI US business.

Edwards received a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from Leeds University in England, graduating with honours in 1988. He has also completed the International Leadership Program at the International Institute for Management Development in Switzerland.

UK: Tarmac has appointed Graeme Bride as the plant manager of its Aberthaw cement plant. He takes over the role from Chris Bradbury, who has been appointed Cement Plant Manager of Tarmac’s Tunstead operations.

Bride, aged 46 years, graduated as a mechanical engineer from the University of Birmingham and has an MBA from Manchester Business School. He has over 24 years of operational experience gained in the cement, sugar and power generation industries across Europe, Asia and Africa. His most recent role was Health and Safety Director in Lafarge Africa. He holds 19 years cement plant management experience from his time spent working in Nigeria and the Philippines.

Germany: Klaus Keysberg has been appointed as the chief executive officer of ThyssenKrupp Materials Services, with effect from 1 January 2019. He was previously working as the division’s chief financial officer (CFO). In addition, Ilse Henne will join the board of the business area as chief operating officer (COO).

Keysberg has been a member of the board of the business area since 2011 and CFO since 2014. He is to retain this post until further notice. As CEO, Keysberg will succeed Joachim Limberg, who will retire. Before his appointment as CFO of Materials Services, Keysberg was COO of the business area from 2011 to 2014 and also held various management roles at operating units.

Henne has worked as the CEO of ThyssenKrupp Schulte and the Western Europe and Asia-Pacific regions. She will continue to hold this post until a successor is found.