FHWA publishes portland limestone cement benchmark

The Federal Highway Administration’s new TechNote on Portland Limestone Cement (FHWA-HRT-23-104) provides state highway agencies, contractors and concrete practitioners information enabling broader adoption of a blended binder to which cement plants across North America are migrating. The 12-page document reviews the history of PLC in the U.S.; chemical and physical requirements for a binder combining portland cement + 5-15 percent…

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Multinational cement players team to back six carbon management consortia

Sources: Global Cement and Concrete Association, London; CP staff An unprecedented research, development and commercialization project under the Global Cement and Concrete Association aligns multinational producers and proprietors of technologies aimed at streamlining or capturing and utilizing carbon dioxide emissions from cement plants or other major industrial sources. The project teams permutations of major European, Latin American and Asian cement…

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Escalante takes helm of GCC, Henley to lead U.S. business

Source: Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua, Mexico

The GCC Board of Directors has appointed Enrique Escalante chief executive officer, effective January 2015. He succeeds Manual Milan, who is retiring after a tenure during which the company, through U.S. market entry, grew from six to116 ready mixed concrete plants and two to six cement plants, and developed a solid distribution network that transformed it into a supplier of choice.

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LafargeHolcim dovetails stepped up U.S., Canadian regulator cooperation

Lafarge SA and Holcim Ltd. officials see financial benefits and integration possibilities in their proposed “merger of equals,” netting LafargeHolcim—present in 90 countries with $44 billion in sales; 470 million and 384 million tons of cement and aggregate shipments, respectively; plus, 90 million yd. of ready mixed production. The strategy they outlined in Zurich and Paris last month leads to a mid-2015 1:1 share exchange, the merged business operating under executives and directors drawn equally from both companies.

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