Global Cement News

Canada: The Cement Association of Canada (CAC) has appointed Adam Auer as its next president and chief executive officer (CEO) with effect from the start of April 2022. He will succeed long-standing president and CEO Michael McSweeney, who has held the post for 12 years. McSweeney will remain as a strategic advisor to Adam Auer until the end of June 2022.

Auer holds over 20 years’ experience as a sustainability professional working with public, private and non-profit institutions. As the CAC’s Vice President of Environment and Sustainability he has worked with government, industry, environmental and other civil society groups to promote and enhance concrete’s contribution to sustainability, with a specific emphasis on life cycle approaches to climate change mitigation and adaptation. Prior to joining the CAC in 2012, Auer managed Environment Canada’s Corporate Environmental Innovation initiative, a multi-stakeholder program to promote the business and financial case for corporate environmental leadership and the link between sustainability and an innovative and competitive economy. He holds a Master of Environmental Studies from York University and a Bachelor of Science in Ecology from the University of British Columbia.

Austria: Semperit AG Holding has appointed Karl Haider as its new chief executive officer (CEO). His tenure will last until the end of March 2024. He succeeds Martin Füllenbach, who resigned from his position prematurely at the end of September 2021. Since that time, chief financial officer Petra Preining and chief operation officer Kristian Brok have assumed the responsibilities of a CEO on an interim basis.

Haider recently worked as the Chief Commercial Officer at Tata Steel Europe. At Tata Steel, he had previously also led major merger and acquisition transactions and served as Director Operations Downstream. Prior to that, he was a member of the board of Voestalpine's high performance metals division, having held sales and project management positions in the group. He started his career as a chemical laboratory technician and subsequently studied technical chemistry at the Johannes Kepler University Linz.

Semperit develops and produces specialised rubber products for the industrial and medical sectors, selling them in over 100 countries around the world. Its products for the cement industry include conveyor belts. The company has its headquarters in Vienna.

India: UltraTech Cement has commissioned the new 2Mt/yr Line 2 of its Bara grinding plant in Uttar Pradesh. The additional capacity will help the company to serve the growing Central Indian cement market. Its total installed capacity is now 115Mt/yr, up by 2.9% year-on-year from 111Mt.

UltraTech Cement says that the Bara grinding plant, which opened in January 2020, operated at 80% capacity utilisation in the 2020 financial year.

Nepal: Huaxin Cement Narayani has ignited the kiln at its 1Mt/yr Dhading cement plant in Bagmati. Construction of the project started in 2019 but it was delayed by flooding, disputes over land ownership and the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic. China-based Huaxin Cement originally signed an agreement with the Investment Board Nepal in 2018 to build the plant for US$140m.

South Korea: A TEC says that it has installed and commissioned a ReduDust dust treatment plantin the chlorine bypass system of Ssangyong Cement’s Donghae cement plant in Gangwon. The ReduDust plant will recover salts from dust, enabling the producer to reuse the dust in its cement production. The supplier says that it will yield 35,000t/yr of useable dust. Ssangyong Cement already uses an A TEC Rocket Mill grinding unit in its alternative fuel (AF) production at the Donghae cement plant.