Spain: Lafarge has appointed Maruxa Suarez as director of its Spanish plant in Villaluenga de la Sagra, Toledo. Suarez, who was previously a production director at the plant, will replace Mariano Garcia Hoyos. Suarez started working for Lafarge in 2004 at the environment unit of the company in Madrid. He later joined the management team as process engineer and production director.

Spain: Matteo Rozzanigo has been appointed as CEO of FYM, Italcementi's Spanish subsidiary. He is tasked with positioning the company in a cement market that is expected to stabilise and recover slowly after a prolonged crisis period. Rozzanigo replaces Mario Domenico Bracci, who held the post for the past three years and will now assume responsibilities for Ciments Maroc.

Rozzanigo holds an Industrial Engineering degree from the Polytechnic University of Milan, Italy and has been with Italcementi for 11 years. In the past five years, he was employed as Italcementi's director for the Near East, effectively managing the operations in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

Angola made similar noises to Nigeria this week when one of its government ministers declared that the country was self-sufficient in terms of cement production. The comments came from Industry minister Bernarda Martins at a visit by the Angolan president to the China International Fund Luanda Cement plant. Martins' words echoed those made by Joseph Makoju, Chairman of the Cement Manufacturing Association of Nigeria, who declared that his country was making more cement than it consumed back in 2012.

Claims of self-sufficiency are all about context. A major or fast growing economy such as Nigeria declaring self-sufficiency in cement could suggest a potential paradigm shift. A smaller economy might simply have risen from a low production base to a slightly higher one with little consequence. So what does this mean for Angola?

The southern African country has a population far smaller than Nigeria at 19 million. Yet, its gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, in purchasing power parity terms, was estimated to be US$6484 in 2014 by the International Monetary Fund, a figure slightly higher than Nigeria's. In nominal terms its GDP was the fifth biggest in Africa in 2013.

Global Cement Directory 2015 research (to be published in late 2014) gives Angola's four integrated cement plants with a total cement production capacity of just under 6Mt/yr. The plant the politicians have just visited has reportedly just increased its clinker capacity to 3.6Mt/yr and another 0.6Mt/yr capacity is planned to join the market when an InterCement plant expands in 2017. Together this places the country's production at around 8Mt/yr. Domestic cement demand was placed at 6.5Mt/yr in early 2014 giving the country a cement consumption of just under 350kg/capita.

Transnational African bank Ecobank declared than Angola was becoming Central Africa's cement production hub in a commodities report in July 2014. Out of the sub-Saharan countries it has become the fourth largest producer after Nigeria, South Africa and Ethiopia and the third largest consumer after Nigeria and South Africa. Angola too has restricted cement imports, like Nigeria. In 2014 the Ministry of the Economy, Industry, Commerce and Construction implemented a stoppage on imports in a phased manner under the auspices of its local cement association, the Association of Industrial Cement of Angola.

Where Angola is different to Nigeria is in the composition of the companies that produce its cement. There is no large local presence to rival Nigeria's Dangote. The former colonial links are there with a plant operated by Brazil's InterCement, who inheritied it from Portuguese company Cimpor. Of the rest, Chinese and South Korean investors figure prominently.

Finally, it is also worth noting that Angola has none of the main sub-Saharan players present including Dangote, PPC or Lafarge Africa. Roughly half-way between the African cement powerhouses of Nigeria and South Africa and with a handy coastline, Angola deserves further attention.

US: Torsten Gessner has stepped down as CEO of ThyssenKrupp North America as of 10 October 2014. Patrick Bass, currently senior vice president Product Lifecycle Management/Research and Development at the ThyssenKrupp Elevator headquarter in Germany will become CEO of ThyssenKrupp North America as of 1 January 2015. Kevin Backus, Senior Vice President and General Counsel at ThyssenKrupp North America will be responsible for the regional headquarter on an interim basis.

Patrick Bass started his career at ThyssenKrupp with ThyssenKrupp Elevator Corp., Horn Lake, US as a Mechanical Engineer in 1999. He served in various positions in the Elevator organisation where he took over the position of Executive Vice President of Research and Development before he changed to ThyssenKrupp's Elevator headquarter in Essen, Germany and took over the position of Senior Vice President Product/Research and Development in 2012.

Torsten Gessner started his career as Chief Operating Officer at ThyssenKrupp CENE in 2005. In 2009 he became CEO of ThyssenKrupp's global Business Unit for Escalators and Passenger Boarding Bridges, headquartered in Germany. In 2012 Torsten Gessner moved to the USA to assume responsibility as CEO for the implementation of ThyssenKrupp's first regional organisation in North America headquartered in Chicago.

With a turnover of Euro8.3bn in the 2012 - 2013 financial year and 20,000 employees, North America is the biggest and most important foreign market of the Essen-based industrial and engineering group.

US: Holcim's Ste. Genevieve plant has appointed three employees to leadership positions. Corey Green was named area leader for Maintenance and Reliability, Rodney Forester accepted the position of operations leader and Houston Meyer was named as Raw Mill area leader.

Green, in his role as Maintenance and Reliability area leader, is responsible for operations and maintenance within the plant area. Green has 15 years of experience in equipment repairs. His previous six years were as a project manager with Roland Machinery Company, where he was responsible for the oversight of the maintenance contract with Holcim.

Forester, in his role as operations leader, will supervise shift personnel and control room operations that support optimisation of processes for efficient operations. Forester joined Holcim (US) in 2008 as a cement technician in the Maintenance and Reliability department and most recently worked in the control room on a temporary operations leader assignment. Forester holds an associate's degree in welding technology from Jefferson College.

Meyer will be responsible for operations and maintenance within the Raw Mill area. He joined the Ste. Genevieve team in 2011. His most recent role was as cement technician with the Raw Mill team. Prior to joining Holcim, Houston was employed at Alberici Constructors for six years.

India: UltraTech Cement Limited has appointed Sukanya Kripalu and Renuka Ramnath as additional independent directors with effect from 11 October 2014.

It's been an expensive few weeks for Holcim. First, the Venuezuelan state-run outfit Corporación Socialista Del Cemento failed to pay its last instalment of US$97.5m in compensation for its forced nationalisation in 2008. Then the European Court of Justice dismissed Holcim's lawsuit against the European Commission over the theft of 1.6 million emissions allowances in 2010. Here we concentrate on the second story.

Holcim Romania's CO2 accounts held within the Romanian National Registry for Greenhouse Gases were illegally accessed by hackers in November 2010. 1,000,000 CO2 allowances were transferred to an account in Liechtenstein. Another 600,000 CO2 allowances were transferred to a company in Italy, which had account registries in Italy and the UK. Parts were then transferred to accounts in the Czech Republic, the UK and France before being sold on to emissions exchanges in Paris and Amsterdam.

Holcim then tried to sue the Commission, which administers the bloc's electronic emissions trading network, in 2012 for failing to freeze the accounts containing the stolen units, for not returning them and for allowing other companies to turn them in for compliance under the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS). The multinational building materials producer tried to force the commission to pay it Euro17.6m for damages associated with the theft. The amount was equivalent to the 905,000 allowances that remain unaccounted for at a spot price of Euro14.6/unit and an interest rate of 8%.

Other registries were also targeted in early 2011. As much as Euro30m in carbon allowances were stolen at the time, leading to exchanges having to stop trading temporarily.

Although this is a relatively small amount for a multinational company that reported net sales of over Euro16bn in 2013, it feels harsh. If a personal investor had assets stolen from a bank or investment scheme they would expect some sort of compensation.

It should be noted though that it is unclear how the hackers gained entry to Holcim's account details. Successful 'phishing' for account logins via fake emails and the like might suggest lax security on Holcim's side. Or a more conventional hack on the registry server might suggest loose security on the registry's side. Add to this the fact that the price of carbon allowances has fallen since 2010. Reuters estimated that the outstanding allowances would be worth Euro5.1m today.

Hopefully the thefts in late 2010 and early 2011 can be marked down as teething problems. Yet the European Union Emission Trading Scheme is compulsory for 11,000 power stations and manufacturing plants. Any European company that may be less keen on the scheme is unlikely to have its fears settled by high profile cases of carbon credit thefts or the current low price of trading.

Meanwhile, companies and investors involved with China's Guangdong Province carbon emission trading scheme, the world's second biggest such scheme after Europe, may well be watching what happens in Europe closely.

India: The board of directors of Gujarat Sidhee Cement Ltd has appointed R Mohnot as CFO and company secretary effective from 1 October 2014.

Energy costs for cement producers in India are set for volatility following the Supreme Court's decision this week to cancel the vast majority of allocated coal blocks. After ruling that the allocation process by the Indian government was illegal and arbitrary the court stopped 214 out of 218 coal blocks. The affected operators working on the blocks have six months until 31 March 2015 to wind down production. At this point the government intends to auction off the blocks.

The background to this decision lies in the so-called coal allocation scam or 'Coalgate.' Over 80% of coal in India is produced by the state owned company Coal India. Since 1993 though the Indian government has been allocating coal blocks or leases to mine coal for captive use by industries such as cement, steel and power generation.

However, the allocation process was accused of lacking transparency compared to an open bidding process. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India estimated the loss to the government was an incredible US$30bn. The allocation process received further scrutiny as Indian coal imports rose leading to accusations of inefficiency on the Coal India side and corruption on the coal block side. Meanwhile, major power cuts such as those in the summer of 2012 focused both domestic and industrial users' minds on the state of the country's coal industry.

Following the power cuts in 2012, an inter-ministerial panel recommended the de-allocation of two coal blocks held by five companies, including Gujarat Ambuja Cement, Grasim Industries and Lafarge India.

India's coal imports started to increase rapidly around 2009 with an annual growth rate of around 5% and a demand growth of 25% from 2009 – 2014. The majority of its imported coal comes from Indonesia, Australia and South Africa. In 2012 its coal imports were over 150Mt.

With Indian cement producers facing production overcapacity and falling profit margins in recent years, any disruption to input costs such as power is bad news. The growing import rates point to an increasing supply-demand mismatch. A more open process for the allocation of India's vast coal reserves should be good news for industrial users in the medium to long term. However, in the meantime they may face a jolt.

US: Eagle Materials has appointed Richard Beckwitt to its board of directors. Beckwitt is President of Lennar Corporation, where he has worked for eight years. Prior to his work with Lennar, Beckwitt held various executive officer positions at DR Horton, including President. He also worked in the Mergers and Acquisitions and Corporate Finance Departments at Lehman Brothers.

"Rick brings a wealth of experience in the homebuilding business to the Eagle Board along with superb operational and financial talents," said Eagle's Chairman Larry Hirsch. "We are confident that Rick will provide valuable input as Eagle continues on its dynamic growth path."