Nigeria: Lafarge Africa has won different awards for its contributions and achievements in sustainability and environmental performance as well as its commitment towards gender inclusion and diversity in the workplace in 2022. These are: the Award for Sustainability Reporting at the 2022 NGX Made of Africa Awards; the Eco-friendly Cement Manufacturing Company of the Year Award at the Environmental Sustainability Conference, Expo, and Awards 2022 (ECOSEA); Environmental Sustainability Professional of the Year for Titilope Oguntuge, the company’s head for Sustainability & Corporate Branding, also at ECOSEA 2022 and; Most Outstanding Company in Gender Inclusion’ (Extractive Industry) at the Women in Marketing Communications Award (WIMCA) 2022.

Organisation and Human Resources director, Gbemiga Owolabi said “At Lafarge, we put people at the heart of everything we do, from promoting diversity in our teams to thriving with our communities, and this was evident in our results. We achieved a 47% representation on our board in 2022 which is a significant increase from 45.5% in 2021 and 40% in 2020.”

Uzbekistan: Cement sales via the Uzbek Commodity Exchange fell by 24% year-on-year to 6.9Mt in 2022. Monthly sales hit a high of 0.82Mt in June 2022, according to Uzbekistan Newsline. Qizilqumcement retained a 40% share of sales but Akhangarancement’s share fell to 19% from 22% previously and Almalyk MMC’s share dropped to 12% from 23%.

By region Tashkent and the Tashkent region held a 25% market share, the Surkhandarya region a 13% share, the Bukhara region a 12% share, the Navoi and Kashkadarya regions a 10% share and the Samarkand and Jizzakh regions held a 8% share each. Data released by the national Agency of Statistics revealed that overall ordinary Portland cement (OPC) production fell by 3% to 11.4Mt in 2022 from 11.8Mt in 2021.

Argentina: Cement shipments reached 0.96Mt in January 2023, while exports totalled 7403t, a joint increase of 8.9% year-on-year and an increase of 3.0% compared to December 2022. No imports were registered.

Austria: RHI Magnesita has invested in Australia-based MCi Carbon as part of a long-term strategic cooperation agreement to research and develop technologies to decarbonise the production of refractories. MCi Carbon sells a mineral carbonation process that creates a range of low-carbon embodied materials, including calcium and magnesium carbonate by carbonating minerals in by-products of industrial processes. RHI Magnesita intends to use this process to reduce its Scope 1 emissions from mineral processing during its refractory production process.

Stefan Borgas, the chief executive officer of RHI Magnesita, said "This partnership could become a breakthrough towards decarbonising the industry. It fits seamlessly with RHI Magnesita's ambitious sustainability strategy." He added "We still have a long way to go but our early-stage investment and the clear intention of a long-term collaboration make this day so memorable. Together with the like-minded team from MCi we will pave the way for a greener industry."

So far, both companies have worked together on CO₂ mitigation studies, mineral carbonisation feedstock assessments and techno-economic analyses at RHI Magnesita's sites around the world. In a next step, the companies' joint efforts will focus on industrial scale-up, expected to start in 2024 with the set-up of a demonstration plant by MCi at Newcastle in Australia, supported by the Australian government.