People

Hungary: Duna-Dráva Cement (DCC) has appointed Zsolt Szilágyi as its president and chief executive officer with effect from January 2023. He succeeds János Szarkándi, who is set to retire.

Szilágyi currently works at the subsidiary of Heidelberg Materials as the Deputy General Manager of Construction Materials and Trade. He started his career at DDC in 1999 as a technical coordinator. Later, he worked as an investment project manager, then as a production manager and plant director of the Váci Cement Plant.

Spain: LafargeHolcim España has appointed Ricardo de Pablos as Commercial Director Cement. He has worked for the group in a variety of roles since 2005 notably as a regional director of aggregates and the export director for Spain. De Pablos holds a master’s degree in industrial engineering from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and a master’s in business administration (MBA) from the IE Business School.

UK: Oscrete UK has appointment three new sales managers and two new trainee concrete technicians as part of on-going growth at the company. David Todd has joined as Area Technical Sales Manager (North), David Taylor as Area Sales Manager (Midlands) and Karl Mobley Area Technical Sales Manager (South East). Keiron and Michael Todd have joining the new product development (NPD) and technical team. Todd worked previously as an account manager for Cemex.

Oscrete is a specialist construction chemical suppliers, manufacturing a range of concrete admixtures for the pre-cast and ready-mix market and developing and supplying additives for the manufacture of dry bagged mortars and adhesives.

UK: The Mineral Products Association (MPA) has appointed Jon Flitney, Michael Conroy, Liam Forde, Steve Callow and Mike Haynes to new roles at the organisation. This follows the appointment of Jon Prichard as the MPA’s chief executive officer in October 2022, succeeding Nigel Jackson.

Jon Flitney has joined MPA Cement as Energy and Climate Change Manager. He will be working with the MPA Cement Climate Change and CO2 Reduction group providing support to sector decarbonisation and associated policies. Flitney joins from the British Ceramic Confederation (BCC) where he has worked across energy, environment, climate change and decarbonisation policy areas for over six years. He also previously worked on air quality and environmental protection for local authorities and the Environment Agency, covering a variety of manufacturing industries.

Michael Conroy joins as Manager - Environment, Safety & Regulatory Affairs for MPA Cement. He has over 20 years’ experience in the mineral products industry and ,since 2016, this has been focussed on environmental management, compliance, permitting and regulation across various sectors within the industry. His role at MPA involves working with members in the cement sector and liaising with the environmental regulators and relevant government departments on behalf of the members to ensure the sector is recognised in a positive and beneficial way. He is secretariat for the Cement Regulatory Interface Group (RIG), which meets regularly to discuss environmental regulatory matters that affect and impact the UK cement sector.

Liam Forde has joined BRMCA/MPA Ready-mixed Concrete as Construction Manager. His main responsibilities will be working with MPA members, the Concrete Centre and UK Concrete to promote safety, best practice, and ready-mixed concrete as the best solution for sustainable and resilient construction. Forde is a chartered civil engineer and joins from BAM Nuttall having had a background in both design and site environments.

Steve Callow has joined as Manager, Masonry and Concrete Products. He joins from Marshalls where he was Specification Manager. He also has sector experience gained from roles in FP McCann, CPM, Milbury Systems and Carillion.
Mike Haynes has joined MPA as British Lime Association Director. He joins MPA after 18 years in the lime industry working in the sales and customer services teams responsible for Construction and Civil Engineering markets and progressing to managing the customer services team. Prior to this, Haynes worked for contractors and consultants in those markets, as an engineer and project manager.

France: Ecocem has appointed Christian Clergue as its European Standardisation Manager. He started his career in the late 1980s working for Vicat, according to AC Presse. During his time with the group he led its SigmaBeton engineering subsidiary and worked as a project manager in fibre concrete and high performance materials. He later worked as a research and development director for Serge Ferrari and then as a department director for Eiffage Genie Civil.