Turkey: The Turkish Cement Manufacturers' Association (TÇMB) has appointed Tamer Saka as its president. He has been the president of Sabancı Holding Cement Group since early 2018.

Saka holds a doctorate from the School of Business at Istanbul University. He worked as the Manager and Senior Manager of Arthur Andersen and Ernst & Young companies, respectively, and he was in charge of Risk Management Consulting Services and then he joined Sabancı Holding family in 2004 as the Risk Management Director. He served as the Executive Director responsible for business development operations of nearly 20 countries, including Turkey, at Willis London in 2010 and 2011. In August 2011, he was appointed as the Strategy and Business Development Coordinator of Kibar Holding and then he was appointed as the Head of Automotive and Corporate Functions Group in May 2012 and as the Kibar Holding Board Member. Tamer Saka became the CEO of Kibar Holding in 2014.

South Africa: PPC has appointed Roland van Wijnen as its chief executive officer (CEO). He succeeds Johan Claassen, who announced his retirement in November 2018. Van Wijnen has signed a four-year contract and is expected to take up the position as soon as he secures a work permit.

Van Wijnen has worked for Holcim and LafargeHolcim for 17 years in various leadership positions across the group including the CEO of Holcim Philippines. He also worked in South Africa for the business before it left the territory. He is an Industrial Engineering graduate from the University of Twente in the Netherlands.

India: Basant Kumar Birla, chairman of BK Birla Group, has died at the age of 98 in Mumbai. He is survived by his grandson Kumar Mangalam Birla, the head of Aditya Birla Group, the owner of UltraTech Cement, amongst many other family members, according to the Times of India.

Part of the influential Birla family of industrialists, Basant Kumar Birla originally started working at Kesoram Industries before turning the business into a conglomerate with concerns in cement, engineering, medium-density fibreboards, pulp and paper, rayon, shipping, tyres, tea, chemicals and other sectors. BK Birla Group reported a turnover of US$2.4bn in the 2018 – 2019 financial year. At present the group now comprises five major companies - Kesoram Industries, Century Textiles & Industries, Century Enka, Mangalam Cement and ECE Industries - and several smaller subsidiaries.

Image of Basant Kumar Birla by Biswarup Ganguly CC BY 3.0

Barbados/Jamaica: Trinidad Cement has made changes to its executive management at its subsidiaries in Barbados and Jamaica. It has appointed Carlos Roberto Cordero Castro as the General Manager of Arawak Cement in Barbados. He succeeds Yago Castro Izaguirre in the role from 1 August 2019. It has appointed Castro Izaguirre as the General Manager of Caribbean Cement. He succeeds Peter Donkersloot Ponce from 1 August 2019.