Global Cement News

Brazil: InterCement has appointed Paulo Eduardo Nigro has its chief executive officer (CEO). Paulo Nigro has acted as CEO in several countries including the US, Italy, Canada and Brazil. The company has also appointed Nicolas Fournier as a new non-executive member of its board of directors.

Nigro started his career as an engineering trainee at Philips in 1981, after which he joined Goodyear, working in industrial and automotive engineering. In 1991 he joined Tetra Pak as a sales manager for the Northeast region of Brazil, which he left to assume the vice presidency of the packaging division of its Canadian subsidiary. In 2001, Nigro was appointed president of Tetra Pak Italia, eventually taking on responsibility for Western Europe. In 2007, he returned to Brazil as president for the local and the Paraguayan markets, while at the same time leading Tetra Pak Latin America operations. He also took the leadership of Tetra Pak for the Americas, moving to Dallas, US where he joined the global top management team of the company. In 2014 Nigro was appointed president of Aché Laboratórios, in Brazil.

Nicolas Fournier holds 25 years of international experience in different industries in Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America and Middle East. With 20 years of global experience on the cement industry, working for Lafarge Group, he acted as CEO of Lafarge Boral Gypsum Asia and was the regional president of Lafarge for Central Europe. More recently, Fournier served as the Managing Director for Energy Solutions Division at Aggreko, UK.

Saudi Arabia: Badr Jawhar has resigned as the chief executive officer of Najran Cement for personal reasons.

In a separate announcement, Najran Cement has appointed Turki Bin Ali Al Shanifi to its board of directors. Turki Bin Ali Al Shanifi holds a degree in Computer Science, specialising in Information Systems and has over 20 years of experience in working with private sector companies in leadership positions. His appointment follows the resignation of Abdulwahab Bin Saud Al Babtain as an independent member of the board.

HeidelbergCement made Italy’s Cementir Holding its Valentine last week in the form of a deal for the Italian company to buy up the remaining shares in Lehigh White Cement in the US. Cementir takes control of the former joint venture by upping its share to 63.25% for US$107m and one of the other partners, Cemex, increases its share to 36.75% for US$34m. Despite making the announcement on Valentine’s Day HeidelbergCement then described the sale in fairly unromantic language, “As a niche product with small volumes, the standalone production of white cement does not fit to the strategic focus on efficiency of HeidelbergCement.” Maybe they could just send flowers to each other next year instead!

More seriously, this latest deal by Cementir is yet another intriguing evolution of the Italian multinational building materials producer. The company says it is the largest white cement producer in the world through subsidiaries like Aalborg Portland in Demark, Sinai White Cement in Egypt and Lehigh White Cement in the US. Its plant at El-Arish in Egypt is the largest white cement unit in the world. In 2016 it reported a white cement production capacity of 3.3Mt/yr from six plants in Denmark, Egypt, China, Malaysia and the US. Its volume sales of white cement were 2.2Mt at this time or a capacity utilisation rate of 67%. In the US it operates two white cement plants located in Waco, Texas and York, Pennsylvania with a total capacity of 0.26Mt/yr, as well as a distribution network throughout the country, which is also used to distribute white cement imported from its partners across North America. In 2017 Cementir produced 10.3Mt of Ordinary Portland (grey) Cement and white cement, a rise of 24.6% year-on-year from 8.25Mt in 2016. The boost was delivered by the acquisition of Compagnie des Ciments Belges. Like-for-like sales volumes increased by around 1.7% year-on-year.

Cementir left the Italian market in 2017 when it sold Cementir Italia to HeidelbergCement for Euro315m. As this column commented as the time (GCW320) the deal seemed cheap given that HeidelbergCement paid Euro315m for five integrated cement plants plus extras. However, Cementir appeared to actually make a profit on Sacci which it picked up cheaply in 2016.

Now HeidelbergCement has returned the favour by selling Cementir the controlling stake in Lehigh White Cement. The German cement producer may have grumpily rubbished the sale in its press release but the language makes one wonder whether this was a quiet part of the Cementir Italia deal in 2017. The white cement industry is miniscule compared to the OPC one but HeidelbergCement has just handed even more control of it to Cementir. From Cementir’s perspective this probably seems very efficient.

South Africa: PPC has announced that its interim chief executive Johan Claassen as chief executive and executive director of the group, effective 15 February 2018. He had been appointed as interim chief executive in July 2017 following the sudden resignation of Darryl Castle.

PPC chairperson Peter Nelson said that, since his appointment as interim chief executive, Claassen had overseen a number of important milestones. He said Claassen had also demonstrated that he had the right skills to lead effectively. PPC also confirmed Njombo Lekula as managing director of the group’s South African cement activities and Mokate Ramafoko as managing director for the rest of Africa’s cement activities.

Oman: Kuldip Chadha has been appointed as the financial officer of Raysut Cement. The Indian national is a qualified chartered accountant with over 40 years’ experience in internal audit, including 26 years at a senior management level.

The cement producer has also appointed Gopal Parikh as its chief operation officer. Gopal, also an Indian national, holds a BE (Mechanical) from Engineering College in India and has more than 30 years’ experience in cement industries at a senior management level.