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21 July 2008 Armtec announces acquisition of Burnco's concrete products subsidiary

Armtec Infrastructure Income Fund has entered into an agreement to acquire the shares of Burnco Concrete Products Ltd. from the Burnco Group of Companies. The purchase price payable for Burnco Concrete is approximately US$50m, excluding transaction costs and working capital adjustments. The closing of the transaction is expected to occur on or about 31 July 2008. Closing of the transaction is conditional on a number of matters typical of a transaction of this type, including certain regulatory approvals.

Burnco Concrete produces a wide variety of precast concrete products and premixed package products, including office and warehouse insulated wall panels, high-rise office panels, architectural wall panels, steps and stairwells, and premixed concrete, mortars, stuccos, cements and hollowcore. Burnco Concrete has four facilities located in Calgary and Edmonton, and employs approximately 260 employees. The company supplies precast concrete and packaged products to the Alberta infrastructure, residential and warehouse markets.

1 July 2008 Resco buys United Refractories

Leading US refractories producer Resco Products Inc, of Pittsburgh, US has acquired United Refractories Inc, of Warren, Ohio. United Refractories, which has two plants at Warren and in Moulton, Alabama, manufactures clay-alumina monolithic refractories, including castables, gunning mixes, shotcrete products, mortars, and slurries, and produces pre-cast shapes for a wide range of uses in the steel industry. United also supplies ceramic welding services to coke ovens and the glass industry as well as contract services to key customers in the steel industry.

1 July 2008 New cement mortas paper from J. Env. Management

A new paper in the Journal of Environmental Management concerns the use of fly ash as a partial substitute in cement mortars with the addition of a dithiocarbamic chelate. The abstract of the paper, written by Xingbao Gao, Wie Wang, Tunmin Ye,; Feng Wang, Yuxin Lan, is as follows: "The management of the big amount of fly ash as hazardous waste from the municipal solid waste incinerator (MSWI) has encountered many problems in China. In this study, a feasibility research on MSWI fly ash utilization as partial cement substitute in cement mortars was therefore carried out. MSWI fly ash was subjected to washing process to reduce its chlorine content (from 10.16% to 1.28%). Consequently, it was used in cement mortars. 10% and 20% replacement of cement by washed ash showed acceptable strength properties. In TCLP and 180-day monolithic tests, the mortars with washed ash presented a little stronger heavy metal leachability, but this fell to the blank level (mortar without washed ash) with the addition of 0.25% chelate. Therefore, this method is proposed as an environment-friendly technology to achieve a satisfactory solution for MSWI fly ash management."

1 June 2008 New mortars factory in the Middle East

SODAMCO Saudi Arabia, a joint venture between SODAMCO Holding and ROLACO Trading and Contracting - Abdul Aziz Abdullah Al-Sulaiman & Co. Ltd., has opened its new factory in Jeddah. ROLACO, a major player in the construction materials industry for more than 45 years, dealing in cement, steel, construction equipment, concrete accessories, finishing products and construction chemicals has thus reinforced its leading position in the Saudi market. SODAMCO has been an active player in the construction chemicals industry in the Middle East and the Gulf since the mid eighties under the name of SODAP Liban/Emirates.

The company successfully entered the markets of Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, UAE, Qatar, and recently Jordan through an acquisition, and has recently consolidated its corporate brand under the name of SODAMCO.

With this new facility, SODAMCO will have a total of six manufacturing plants spread across the Middle East and the Gulf countries, offering the construction industry the widest range of construction chemicals including cement-based mortars, concrete admixtures and other specialties.

12 May 2008 Laticrete Opens First Fully Owned Plant in China

Laticrete International, Inc. celebrated the grand opening of its manufacturing plant in China on April 2, 2008, at Songjiang, Shanghai. Laticrete (Shanghai) Building Material Co. Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of U.S.-based Laticrete International. David Rothberg, chairman/CEO; Erno de Bruijn, president of the International Division; and several Laticrete partners and employee representatives from more than 16 countries and regions attended the gala grand opening ceremony.

The opening of the China facility represented another milestone in the firm's 50-plus years of presence worldwide. The new plant is the first fully owned Laticrete plant outside of the U.S. and has been designed and tailored to meet the stringent quality requirements of Laticrete plants worldwide. Its production line manufactures dry mortars, latex and epoxy products, which include tile and stone adhesives, grouts, latex additives, waterproofing, floor underlayments and EIFS systems serving Greater China. "The increasing trend for thinner and lighter-weight buildings requires even more new and innovative ways to install tile and stone," said Rothberg.

It is expected that within the next decade Laticrete China will exceed the firm's U.S. market in overall sales volume. "The secret of success for Laticrete has been and always will be in providing localized, cutting-edge solutions for tile and stone installations," said de Bruijn. "Additionally, Laticrete is committed to training professional tile installers, contractors and Industry personnel on the latest methods and materials for trouble-free and secure installation of ceramic tile and stone in China. For this reason, we have built a large state-of-the-art training facility at our new Shanghai plant location."

17 April 2008 Winning place on the waterfront

A leading manufacturer of facade renders and construction mortars, Weber has won the first phase contract for the supply of weber.therm XM, an external wall insulation system, for the construction of apartments at The Arc development, Titanic Quarter, Belfast.

1 April 2008 Lafarge Group invests Euro30m in construction of mortarts factory

The Lafarge Group (France), a major international producer of construction materials, has invested Euro30m in construction of a factory for production of gypsum boards and dry-pack mortars in Artemivsk (Donetsk region). The official launching of the factory is planned for 19 March. The first phase of the factory is intended for production of 15Mm2 of gypsum boards and 40,000t of dry-pack mortars per year.

The Lafarge Group has already announced that it intended to construct a factory for production of gypsum boards and dry-pack mortars in the Donetsk region by June 2007. The Lafarge Gypsum company has been selling gypsum boards of its own production (produced at factories in Poland and Germany) for seven years. According to information from the company, Lafarge Gypsum sold about 6Mm2 of gypsum boards in Ukraine in 2005. The Lafarge Group owns 70 factories for production of construction materials around the world.

24 March 2008 Private equity firms lose buy-out race for Maxit Group

Saint-Gobain SA, a producer, processor, and distributor of materials, including glass, ceramics, plastics, and cast iron, has completed the acquisition of Maxit Group AB, a manufacturer of industrial mortars and producer of premix and exclay, from HeidelbergCement AG. According to Reuters, the private equity firms The Blackstone Group L.P., TPG Capital, L.P., EQT Partners AB, CVC Capital Partners, and Bain Capital, LLC had submitted first-round bids for Maxit Group.

4 March 2008 EU gives provisional approval to Saint-Gobain purchase of HeidelbergCement's Maxit unit

European Union regulators gave conditional clearance Tuesday for the purchase of HeidelbergCement AG's industrial mortar-making unit Maxit by France's Compagnie de Saint-Gobain SA. The European Commission says Maxit must sell two subsidiaries active in the production and sale of gypsum-related products to get final antitrust approval of the €2.13 billion (US$3.24 billion) deal. EU regulators said the merger, if unchanged, would have posed competition problems in the European market, notably for producers of gypsum, which is used in the production of cement, ceramics and plasters. The two subsidiaries also make premix mortars used in masonry and tile fixing, but the EU said the deal posed no real competition concerns in that sector. They said the addition of Maxit's mortar activities to Saint-Gobain would create unfair competition conditions in Germany, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands for gypsum-related products. Saint-Gobain, one of the world's largest glass makers, says the deal will double its industrial mortars activities amid a recent flurry of consolidation in the cement and building materials industry. Maxit has 5,130 employees and operates in more than 30 countries.

By acquiring Maxit, Saint-Gobain will strengthen its presence in the industrial mortars business in Germany and Scandinavia, where the company is a leading player. Its Weber unit is the market leader in France and in southern Europe, Saint-Gobain said. HeidelbergCement used the proceeds of the sale to help finance its acquisition of the British building materials producer Hanson PLC which EU regulators approved last August.

25 February 2008, Dyckerhoff Ukraine intent on modernisation

Dyckerhoff Ukraine intends to invest Euro260m in modernising its production by the year 2010. The company's national manager Otto Lose said, "We will invest around Euro200m in switching one of the company's enterprises for the dry method of cement production. The transfer of the enterprises to coal (instead of gas) will take some Euro60m."

According to Lose, these measures are necessary for cutting energy expenses and will allow to cut these expenses in half. He noted that currently the use of coal instead of gas is more advantageous due to the constant rise in prices of the latter. Lose also added that all of Europe's cement plants produce cement via the dry method and only enterprises situated on the territory of the former Soviet Union use the wet process. In course of modernisation of the enterprise, it is not planned to halt the process of wet method production. According to Lose, the wet production method may still beused after the dry production line is commissioned, depending on market needs.

Dyckerhoff AG is an industrial group with the head office in Wiesbaden (Germany). It unites companies producing cement and construction materials such as concretes, concrete wares, mortars, facing and roofing materials. The basis of its product diversity is cement, that is produced at its own plants in Germany, the Netherlands, the US, Luxembourg, the Czech Republic, Poland, Russia and Ukraine. In 2000, Dyckerhoff AG opened its rep-office in Kyiv, which coordinates the activities and development of three cement enterprises - Volyntsement, Pivdentsement and Kyivtsement.

19 February 2008, EU executive extends review of St Gobain/Maxit deal

The European Commission has extended its antitrust review of plans filed by French building materials group Saint-Gobain to buy clay and mortar company Maxit Group from Germany's HeidelbergCement. The extension will be for 10 working days, a standard procedure applied by the EU executive when the companies have offered remedies to antitrust concerns.

The Commission, which polices competition in the 27 EU member states, said in a daily list of its merger reviews on Monday 11 February 2008 that it would now rule on the deal by 4 March 2007. It can decide to clear or conditionally clear the deal, open an in-depth review lasting up to four months or refer the deal to a member state for review.

In November 2007, the Commission told Saint-Gobain that it must refile for clearance of the nearly Euro2.1bn (US$3.1bn) deal. In August 2007, when the companies announced the deal, they said the transaction was based on an enterprise value of Euro2.1bn for Maxit. St Gobain said the acquisition would double the size of its industrial mortars division and that Maxit would fit well with the French company's own Weber mortars business.