Antarctica/UK: Hanson has transported 125t of bagged cement from its Ketton plant in the UK to the British Antarctic Survey’s Rothera Research Station in Antarctica. Construction company BAM Nuttall is upgrading a wharf at the site to improve ship and boating operations and allow it to accommodate the RRS Sir David Attenborough as well as to reduce manual handling cargo loading/unloading time.

The subsidiary of Germany’s HeidelbergCement worked with BAM Nuttall and civil engineering company Keyline to set the technical specification of the cement. Each of the 25kg bags were vacuum sealed and double shrink wrapped onto heat-treated pallets to reduce the risk of contaminating Antarctica’s environment with foreign organisms.

Ukraine: Podilsky Cement’s revenue rose by 2.5% year-on-year to Euro92.3m in 2018. It reduced its loss by 25% to Euro16.2m, according to the Ukrainian News Agency. It produced 1.35Mt of cement. The company is a subsidiary of Ireland’s CRH.

Romania: The Competition Council says it has found irregularities in the cement market. Following an investigation started in the autumn of 2018 it has revealed that the country’s three major producers – Holcim, CRH and HeidelbergCement – were operating with high profit margins and similar market share, according to Business News Europe. It noted that geographic distribution of customers around the three companies’ production facilities might support a hypothesis of market collusion. It also reported similar production capacity utilisation rates between the main producers despite different production capacities.

The Competition Council has not drawn any conclusions from the report. Previously, it said that if it does find any evidence of cartel-like behaviour it could apply a fine of up to 10% of company turnover.

Malaysia: Lafarge Malaysia has resumed supplying cement to the East Coast Rail Link project. The cement producer has been asked to continue supplying the project until the end of 2019, according to the Star newspaper. The US$65m contract was originally agreed in March 2018 but then suspended in July 2018 when the government reviewed the project.