People

Kenya: Janerose Karanja has been appointed as the head of human resources at East African Portland Cement Company. Previously, Karanja worked for the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Cooperatives for over 25 years, according to the Kenyan Star newspaper. He holds an MBA in Human Resource Management from Kenyatta University, a human resource professional certificate from the Institute of Human Resource Management and a bachelor's degree in education from the University of Nairobi.

Dominican Republic: Colombian cement producer Cementos Argos has announced the appointment of Gary Manuel de la Rosa as its new Director General in the Dominican Republic. Previously, de la Rosa acted as a director of the industrial business unit at Cementos Argos in the Caribbean and Central American region.

Nigeria: Brian Egan has been appointed as an executive director to the board of Dangote Cement. Currently the company’s Chief Financial Officer, he has worked for the cement producer since 2014. Previous to this he worked as the executive director and chief financial officer of Petropavlovsk and of Aricom. He has also held senior finance positions at Gloria Jeans Corporation, Georgia – Pacific Ireland and Coca-Cola HBC-Russia. He trained with KPMG and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland.

India: Manoj Agarwal has resigned as the company secretary and compliance officer of Star Cement, with effect from 2 August 2017. His successor is Debabrata Thakurta, a member of the Institute of Company Secretaries of India.

Spain: The board of directors of Oficemen, the Spanish cement association, has elected Jesús Ortiz, the chief executive officer (CEO) of HeidelbergCement in Spain, as its new president. He suceeds Jaime Ruiz de Haro, the CEO of Cemex España.

Jesús Ortiz, aged 56 years, worked between 1983 and 1989 as a Diplomatic Commercial Attaché for the French Ministry for Economy and Finance in various overseas postings and in France. In 1989 he joined Italcementi Group in France and then held different operational responsibilities at its Spainish operations. Between 2003 and 2007 he served as Managing Director of Italcementi Group’s activities in Greece and Bulgaria. He joined HeidelbergCement in 2007 as its General Manager for Spain before moving to Brussels to assume responsibilities for the group’s aggregate and concrete business in Europe and Africa. Following HeidelbergCement’s acquisition of Italcementi in 2016 he returned to Spain to coordinate the integration of the companies.

He holds a diploma in Economics and Business Administration from the ESC Clermont Graduate School of Management in Clermont-Ferrand, France and a master's degree from the European Institute of Business Administration in Fontainebleau, France. He is also the president of the European Aggregates Association (UEPG).