Canada: McInnis Cement has appointed Baudouin Nizet as its president and chief executive officer (CEO) with immediate effect. He succeeds Jean Moreau, who worked as the interim president and CEO since mid-2018.

Nizet career in the cement industry, includes working at CRH Canada / Holcim Canada as Senior Vice President for Quebec and the Atlantic Region from 2006 to 2013 in Montreal, then in Toronto as president and CEO from 2013 to 2017. Until recently, he was Senior Vice President at Stuart Olson Building Group, a construction company based in Calgary. In addition to serving as a director of the Cement Association of Canada for several years, he also served until 2017 as Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of the Canada Green Building Council, responsible for LEED certifications in eco-responsible constructions.

McInnis Cement has also appointed Alex Wojciechowski as its chief operating officer. Wojciechowski holds over 30 years of experience as a manager in the cement industry in Canada and in the US. He has held various positions ranging from Maintenance Manager to Plant Manager to Industrial Manager. His expertise covers both cement operations and constructing and commissioning industrial equipment investment projects.

Trinidad: Guillermo Rojo De Diego, the general manager of Trinidad Cement, has taken over responsibility for the company’s subsidiary, Readymix (West Indies). It follows the reassignment of the former general manager Nigel Tozer to a new role within Cemex Group.

Finland: Metso has appointed Giuseppe Campanelli as President, Minerals Services business area and a member of its executive team. Previously he was a member of the Minerals Services business area management team heading Professional Services. It has also appointed Kalle Sipilä as President, Pumps business area and a member of the executive team. Prior to this, he was operationally in charge of the pumps business area in addition to his role as head of Finance and Business Control of the Minerals Services business area.

The new appointments follow the resignation of Mikko Keto, Metso’s former president of its Minerals Services and Pumps business areas.

UK: Bunting has appointed Alan Why as its UK Sales Manager overseeing all external sales activity. His engineering career began as a radio-frequency (RF) electronics design engineer and evolved into the role of Sales & Marketing Director of a small electronics company serving the defence electronics market. Why has developed magnet-related business for Bunting since he joined the company in 2013. The responsibilities of his new role cover a wider product range including magnets, magnetic separators and metal detectors.

Bunting is a designer and manufacturer of magnetic separators, metal detectors, magnets, magnetic assemblies and magnetising equipment. The Bunting European manufacturing facilities are in Redditch, just outside Birmingham, and Berkhamsted, both in the UK.

UK: Cemex has entered a conditional agreement with Breedon Group for the divestment of certain UK assets, including 49 ready-mix plants, 28 aggregate quarries and a cement terminal for Euro211m including Breedon Group’s assumption of Euro27.3m lease liability. Cemex UK retains the 1.2Mt/yr Rugby cement plant in Warwickshire. Breedon Group CEO Pat Ward said, “We expect the deal to be accretive to both earnings and free cash flow in the first full year, with a positive ongoing impact on the cash generation of the enlarged Group.” Cemex CEO Fernando Gonzalez said that the transaction ‘further rebalances our portfolio into our core markets, enhances our profitability and enables us to continue to focus on deleveraging.’

The businesses being handed over also include concrete products operations, depots and asphalt plants and fall under all six of Breedon Group’s regional divisions. Ward has said the acquisitions will significantly enlarge the group’s footprint in underrepresented divisions, implying that the cement terminal in question may be the Leith terminal in Scotland or the Newport terminal in Wales, two regions in which the company currently has no terminals to receive cement produced at its 1.5Mt/yr integrated Hope cement plant in Derbyshire. Breedon Group will seek to hire employees working on the operations from Cemex and expects to bring its total UK personnel to 3600 people as a result. It says its mineral reserves will exceed 1.0Bt.

Cemex UK retains 259 concrete plants and 36 aggregates quarries and dredging operations. Cemex said it ‘will retain a substantial integrated business in the UK encompassing cement production.’

US: The attorney’s office of Harris County in Texas filed a lawsuit against Sesco for alleged public safety and environmental violations following multiple complaints to the Harris County Pollution Control Board about dust. Piles of debris in an outdoor area of Sesco’s Houston cement terminal may have caused high dust levels in and around the facility and high pH levels in water located nearby. Houston Business Journal conjectured that the stockpiles might consist of surplus cement being stored unlawfully. Sesco stands accused of operating two silos and three hoppers without proper environmental clearance. Inspections in 2019 uncovered set cement in storm drains at the facility.

Iran: Shahrood Cement Company, which operates a 1.9Mt/yr integrated cement plant in Shahrood in north-eastern Iran, produced over 0.2Mt of cement over the nine month period ending 21 December 2019. Semnan province Industry, Mine and Trade Organisation chair Behrouz Asvadi said that all of the cement produced by the company was exported to countries on the Caspian Sea as well as to Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. Revenue over the period was US$5.06m. The company is meeting to discuss issues in shipping and crediting.

US: Holcim US’s 1.9Mt/yr Portland cement plant in Colorado has become the latest site to host a large-scale cement plant carbon capture and storage (CCS) study. Holcim US, in partnership withCanada-based Svante, France-based Total and US-based Occidental subsidiary Oxy Low Carbon Ventures, will install a facility designed to capture 0.73Mt/yr of CO2, which Occidental will take for safe storage underground. The study will assess the financial viability and design requirements of such an installation on a permanent basis.

Argentina: The total volume of Argentine cement sold in 2019 was 11.1Mt – down by 6.1% year-on-year from 11.8Mt in 2018. The year’s economic recession and currency devaluation hit December’s sales especially hard, with just 0.74Mt sold, of which 0.11Mt was exported. Esmerk Latin American News has reported that Argentina was self-sufficient for cement in 2019, with no imports throughout the year.

Austria: RHI Magnesita has published details of a planned raw materials plant in Austria. The company will spend Euro40m in the construction of the Dolomite Resource Centre Europe for the processing of raw local dolomite into sintered dolomite for use in refractory products at Hochfilz in the state of Tyrol. State Governor Günther Platter and French ambassador to Austria François Saint-Paul joined local folkloric figures Krampus and Saint Nikolas in breaking ground at the site of the future plant, which will be the source of dolomite for all RHI Magnesita European operations from 2021. The plant is part of a raft of projects totalling Euro300m in additional investments by the Austria-based refractory products manufacturer in 2020.