Romania: Holcim Romania has announced its acquisition of independent ready-mix concrete market leader General Beton Romania. The latter operates eight batching plants with a total of 160 employees. Its markets include Arad, Bucharest, Constanta and Sibiu. Holcim Romania says that it plans to use the acquisition to grow its ECOPact green concrete’s footprint.

Europe, Middle East Africa regional head Miljan Gutovic said “General Beton provides an excellent addition to our strong and diversified ready-mix concrete operations. Over more than two decades, General Beton has been a long-standing Holcim partner as well as a growing and highly successful business. I am delighted to welcome them to the Holcim family.”

Spain: CRH’s Catalonian ready-mix concrete subsidiary Beton Catalan has partnered with Grapheno Smart Materials in order to implement the latter’s graphene technology in its high-performance concrete products.

Beton Catalan’s quality director Alberto Arenillas said that the company’s high-performance concrete products require ‘a significant amount of CEM I cement,’ He said “By introducing the graphene additive, the nominal amounts of this cement can be reduced or changed to cement with a lower carbon footprint, improving its performance.” The company will sell the graphene-enriched concrete under its BeGreen reduced-CO₂ products label.

Libya: Al-Hosn International Company for Building Materials Industry has partnered with China and Germany-based Zenith to establish an insulated concrete block plant. The Benghazi Chamber of Commerce has held a meeting with the companies to discuss their plans.

India: Three new Indian concrete companies have separately secured agreements for the use of Finland-based Betolar’s Geoprime alkali-activated slag and fly ash additive. Reuters News has reported that the companies are Balaiji Cement Products, Shiv Tiles and SNEH Precast. Engineering company Godrej & Boyce has also signed a letter of intent with the supplier for pilot production of concrete blocks, paving slabs and other elements.

Betolar expects producers to achieve global concrete production volumes of 250,000t/yr of concrete containing Geoprime by 2023.