Saudi Arabia: Southern Province Cement expects to sign a contract for construction of a planned 10,000t/day new line at its Jazan cement plant in early 2023. Mist News has reported that the company commenced tendering for technical and financial offers for the project in May 2022.

When commissioned, Southern Province Cement plans for the new line to replace the plant’s older existing lines.

Türkiye: Akçansa has appointed Vecih Yılmaz as its general manager. The cement producer is a joint-venture between Sabancı Holding and Heidelberg Materials.

Yılmaz, started his career as an auditor at Deloitte in 2005 and later joined Sabancı Group in 2009. Between 2015 and 2017, he was the chief financial officer at Assan Panel and Financial Affairs Director at Kibar Holding. Both companies are part of Kibar Group. He rejoined Sabancı Group in 2017 as the finance director at Sabancı Holding and also served as a member of the board of directors at Kordsa and Yünsa. He has worked as the Deputy General Manager of Finance and Financial Affairs at Çimsa since 2019.

Yılmaz is a graduate from the Department of Business Administration at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara. He completed the Political Science and Public Administration minor program at the same institution. He also holds a master's degree in financial economics from Galatasaray University in 2012.

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.

Egypt: Misr Beni Suef's sales were US$51.1m in the first nine months of 2022, up by 77% year-on-year from US$28.8m. Nonetheless, the producer recorded a loss of US$15.9m, compared to a profit of US$3.4m during the corresponding period of 2021.

Indonesia: Solusi Bangun Indonesia has ordered a Siwertell screw-type ship loader from Sweden-based Bruks Siwertell via contractor Hutama Karaya (Persero). The ship loader will be used at Solusi Bangun Indonesia’s Tuban terminal in Java. The HST 1000 1B-type ship loader has a continuous cement handling capacity of 1000t/hr and can load either open-hatched or conventional bulk carriers up to 50,000dwt. It will be assembled on site and is planned for delivery at the end of 2023.

Solusi Bangun Indonesia, a subsidiary of Semen Indonesia, has a cement production capacity of 15Mt/yr. It operates one cement plant on Sumatra and three on Java in Narogong, Cilacap and Tuban. The Tuban site is Solusi Bangun Indonesia’s first new terminal construction.

India: Birla Corporation plans to invest a total of US$1bn in realising its planned 50% cement capacity footprint expansion to 30Mt/yr by 2030. The producer is considering establishing 4Mt/yr-worth of new cement plants, possibly in the form of a new 4Mt/yr integrated cement plant in Chhattisgarh. It would also carry out 4Mt/yr-worth of upgrades and 2Mt/yr-worth of debottlenecking work.

The producer expects its newly commissioned Mukutban cement plant to contribute 600,000 - 700,000t of cement production during the remaining five months of the 2023 financial year, rising to 3Mt/yr by 2024.

During the 2022 financial year, Birla Corporation increased its cement sales volumes by 6% to 14Mt. The company said that it achieved 95% capacity utilisation throughout the year. It noted continuing cost pressures and slow demand growth so far in the 2023 financial year.

Chair Harsh Vardhan Lodha said "Things may not look up immediately, but post-Diwali we are hopeful of a robust turnaround."

UK: Tarmac has appointed Craig Kirkland as the plant manager of Tarmac’s integrated Dunbar plant in Scotland. Kirkland first started working for the subsidiary of Ireland-based CRH in the mid-1990s as its Landfill & Recycling Manager. He later became its Commercial Manager in 2015 before becoming the Head of Transformation at the Dunbar plant in 2021.

India: JK Cement subsidiary Jaykaycem (Central) has secured a contract for the supply of cement for Rail Vikas Nigam's construction of a new line on the West Central Railway network between Devendra Nagar and Puraina in Madhya Pradesh. The line will be 50km in length.

Uzbekistan: The President of Uzbekistan signed in a law change on 1 March 2022 permitting legal entities to export cement on the basis of direct contracts. The change also applies to clinker. Under the current law, all exporters can claim up to 50% of transport costs for subsidisation by the Export Promotion Agency of Uzbekistan.

Czech Public: Ukraine-based Betonmash has fulfilled an order for a Granit-42 ready-mix concrete batching plant from a customer in the Czech Republic. The 42m3/hr-capacity plant consists of a 750l rotary mixer and 75t hopper. Italy-based Bonfiglioli supplies the Grant-42’s drives, Italy-based Camozzi supplies its pneumatic components and Italy-based WAM supplies its screw conveyors. It uses sensors produced by Netherlands-based Zemic.