US: Anne Lloyd has been appointed as a non-executive director of James Hardie. Lloyd previously worked as chief financial officer (CFO) of Martin Marietta Materials for over 12 years from June 2005 until her retirement in August 2017.

She joined Martin Marietta in 1998 as Vice President and Controller and was promoted to Chief Accounting Officer in 1999. She was subsequently appointed Treasurer (2006 - 2013) and promoted to Executive Vice President in 2009. Earlier in her career, Ms Lloyd spent 14 years with Ernst & Young, latterly as a senior manager and client service executive for the natural resources, mining, insurance and healthcare industries.

Uzbekistan: 80% of local cement sales were made through the Uzbek Commodity Exchange in the first nine months of 2018. Local sales fell by 4.7% year-on-year to 5.6Mt from 5.9Mt, according to the Trend News Agency. 4.5Mt of this total was sold through the commodity exchange. Falling sales have been blamed on rising natural gas and electricity prices. Tariffs for gas and electricity have increased by at least 60% during 2018 for industrial users in the construction industry, including cement producers.

US: Dorothy M Ables has been appointed to the board of directors of Martin Marietta Materials. With Ables’ appointment, the Martin Marietta board comprises 10 directors, four of whom have joined since 2016. She will serve on Martin Marietta’s Audit Committee.

Ables, aged 60 years, brings financial and operational experience to the Martin Marietta board. Most recently, she served as Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) of Spectra Energy from 2008 until her retirement in early 2017, completing a career of over 30 years at Spectra Energy and its predecessor companies. As CAO, Ables was responsible for information technology, human resources, support services and community relations. Prior to that, she held roles as Vice President of Audit Services and as Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer for Spectra, and as Senior Vice President and chief financial officer (CFO) for Duke Energy Gas Transmission. Ables began her career in the audit department of Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co, a predecessor of KPMG.

Ables currently serves as a member of the board of directors of Cabot Oil & Gas, where she is on the Audit and Compensation Committees. She also sits on the board of Houston Methodist Hospital Foundation. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelor of Business Administration in Accounting.

Russia: Eurocement has appointed Sergey Lobov as the manager of its Voronezh subsidiary and Vadim Shablitsky as the general director of its Neviansky cement plant. Yaroslav Stoupa, Vice-President of Eurocement Group for production and technical development, introduced the new appointments at a visit to each plant.

Lobov graduated from the Belgorod State Technological Academy of Building Materials with a degree in mechanical engineering. He has been working in the cement industry for 17 years, of which 14 have has been based at the Oskolcement enterprise, where he has advanced from being an equipment repairman to a deputy general director and technical director. From 2015, he worked as the general director of Neviansky Cementnik.

Shablitsky graduated from Belgorod State University of Technology with a degree in chemical engineering and an engineering qualification. He has been working in the cement industry for over 14 years. At the Belgorodsky Cement he worked in various positions from assistant cement mill driver to plant general director, and then he was deputy general director for production at Mordovcement.