People

India: Wonder Cement has appointed Sanjiv Waid as State Head. He previously worked as a Sales Marketing Manager for Ambuja Cements and has held roles with Nuvoco Vistas and ACC. He holds a bachelor’s in Industrial Chemistry from Delhi University.

India: Gebr. Pfeiffer India has appointed Sridhar Shanmugha Sundaram as Senior Vice President, Head of Sales & Marketing.

Sundaram previously worked for FLSmidth for over 30 years. He started in the early 1990s as an Engineer – Plant Engineering and later became Manager - Cement Project Sales in India in the mid-2000s. Amongst other roles he was the Head of Project Sales in India in the mid-2010s and his last position with FLSmidth was as Vice President, Head of Global Product Line - Grinding and Gears from early 2023. Sundaram holds an undergraduate degree in Engineering from the College of Engineering Guindy in Chennai and an Executive Masters of Business Administration from Copenhagen Business School in Denmark.

UK: Aggregate Industries has appointed Lee Sleight as its new CEO. He succeeds Dragan Maksimovic in the post, who was appointed as Region Head West Europe earlier in 2024. Sleight will take up his new position from 1 August 2024.

Sleight joined the UK subsidiary of Holcim in 2021 as the managing director of the ready-mixed concrete division. He became the head of the aggregates division in late 2023. Prior to his time with Aggregate Industries, Sleight worked for Sika in the UK from 2008 to 2019 in a variety of managerial roles. He was then appointed as Business Unit Manager for Sika in 2019.

Kaziwe Kaulule will succeed Sleight as the managing director of the company’s aggregates division. Kaziwe joined Aggregate Industries in late 2023 as Director of Strategic and Commercial Growth, having previously been CEO of Holcim’s South Africa and Zimbabwe businesses.

Tanzania: Mbeya Cement has appointed Mohamed Ismail Elsaidy as its CEO. He holds 25 years of experience in the industrial sector with much experience in cement. He started his career working for Blue Circle in Saudi Arabia in the late 1990s. He later held engineering roles for the Egyptian Cement Company, Lafarge Emirates Cement and eventually became the Operation and Process General Manager for Wadi El Nile Cement. As well as holding academic positions, he also worked for the Egyptian General Authority for Standardization and Quality in the early 2020s. Elsaidy holds a PhD in chemical engineering from Cairo University.

Mexico: The National Cement Chamber (CANACEM) has appointed Julio Cedeño as its General Director. He previously worked as the Director of Institutional Relations for the Camara Nacional de la Industria del Hierro y del Acero (CANCERO), an organisation representing the steel sector in Mexico. Cedeño is a graduate of the Universidad Iberoamericana in Political Science and Public Administration.

CANACEM represents the six cement companies in Mexico: Cementos Moctezuma, Cemento Cruz Azul, Cemex México, Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua, Holcim México and Cementos Fortaleza. 35 cement plants operate in the country producing nearly 47Mt/yr of cement and employing over 26,500 people. The organisation was originally founded in 1948.