Global Cement News

Australia: Boral has appointed Vik Bansal as its chief executive officer (CEO) and managing director with effect by 5 December 2022. Zlatko Todorcevski will remain as CEO until transition to Bansal is completed.

Bansal holds over 30 years of management experience with industrial organisations. He has been the CEO of steel-manufacture InfraBuild since mid-2021. Prior to this he was the head of waste management company Cleanaway from 2015 to 2021. He is currently the chairman of LGI and has volunteered as a director for organisations including the National Waste & Recycling Industry Council, Waste Management & Resource Recovery and Disability Services Australia.

Bansal is a Fellow of the Institute of Engineers Australia and the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He originally trained as an electrical engineer, holds a master of business administration (MBA) degree and has completed the Advanced Management Program from INSEAD. He has also completed a Master of Laws in Enterprise Governance.

Germany: Hengst Filtration has appointed Norbert Gregor as the group director of Hengst Group and the managing director of Industrial Air Filtration. He assumes his duties in a dual leadership role with Merete Gotfredsen, who leads the Process Air Filtration segment as its managing director. Both report directly to Peter Wink, Group Vice President for Industrial Air Filtration.

Gregor is a business economist who holds more than 25 years of management experience with a specialism in marketing and sales. From 2014, he was Vice President for DACH (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) and Eastern Europe at the Sweden-based filter specialist Camfil. In 2019, he moved to the Helsa Group as its chief executive officer, for which he was the managing director and realigned the two business units for molecular filtration (Helsatech) and elastomer technology (Helsacomp), which he sold to Mann+Hummel after a reorganisation. There, as Global Vice President, he was responsible for the post-merger integration of Helsa for two years, creating the new molecular filtration segment for the Life Science division for Mann+Hummel.

Zimbabwe: Holcim subsidiary Associated International Cement has entered into a binding agreement to sell its 76% stake in Lafarge Zimbabwe to Fossil Mines for an undisclosed amount. Five bidders were competing for the cement company, according to the Business Times newspaper. These companies included three China-based companies as well as local ones. China-based Huaxin Cement was reportedly one of the Chinese bidders.

Tanzania: ARM Cement has repaid all creditors of Tanzanian subsidiary Maweni Limestone to which it owed money. The East African newspaper has reported that the group used the proceeds from its sale of Maweni Limestone to Huaxin Cement for US$102m to pay off the debts. It paid US$74.4m to creditors and US$4.6m to the Tanzanian tax authorities.

In its native Kenya, ARM Cement sold its assets to National Cement Company (NCC) for US$42.7m. It has paid secured creditors there US$42.6m of a total US$68.7m due. It also owed unsecured creditors US$98.4m.

Ethiopia: Oromia State has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Mining and 20 cement companies to regulate the price of cement. State Deputy President Awolu Abdi said that the price of cement products had been ‘skyrocketing’ due to international and internal factors, according to Walta Media. He partly blamed the problem on ‘illegal’ cement brokers and the inability of cement plants to produce output at their full capacity. The state government has been working with cement producers and approved distributors on the problem. The regional move follows action by the central government to cut out dealers and distributors from the market in mid-May 2022.