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Nigeria: Former Lafarge Zimbabwe chairman Johnathan Shonhiwa has joined Dangote Group. Shonhiwa, who resigned from Lafarge Zimbabwe recently, was chairman for almost two years after having taken over from Muchadeyi Masunda in January 2014. Prior to that, he was managing director of Lafarge Zimbabwe for six years, finance director for four and a half years and finance manager for two years.

Russia: Igor Nikolenko has been appointed as the new general director of EuroCement's CJSC Kavkazcement. Igor Nikolenko was born in Belgorod in 1965. He graduated from Belgorod Technological Institute of Building Materials in Mechanical Engineering in 1990 and then worked in the Belgorod cement plant.

Kavkazcement is one of the largest cement plants in southern Russia with a production capacity of 3.1Mt/yr. The raw material base is limestone from the Ust-Dzhegutinsky mine and clay from Karachay-Cherkessia. The company became part of EuroCement in 2004.

Ireland: Senan Murphy, currently chief operating officer at the Bank of Ireland, has been appointed as group finance director at CRH, according to The Irish Examiner.

Murphy will take up his new role, as well as joining the CRH board, in January 2015. He will succeed Maeve Carton in the finance director role, who has been in that position since 2010. Carton will move to a newly-created wider role with the title of group transformation director. There, she will be charged with better integrating CRH's businesses, identifying operational and financial opportunities and cash generation opportunities.

India: UltraTech Cement Ltd has reported that the tenure of S Rajgopal, Independent Director of the company, ended upon the conclusion of the annual general meeting of the company held on 28 August 2015.

UK: Simon Vivian, Chief Executive of Breedon Aggregates Limited, has been appointed as Chairman of the UK's Mineral Products Association (MPA) for the next two years. He succeeded Bill Brett, effective 1 September 2015. Vivian is the third chairman of the MPA to date to serve from an independent company.

"We are delighted that Simon has agreed to pick up the baton from Bill. His wide industry knowledge and experience will be invaluable to the association as we look to set the agenda for the industry for the next 10 years and respond to the challenges ahead," said MPA Chief Executive Nigel Jackson

The MPA looks out for the interests of the UK's cement producers.