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Financing for a road project in Mozambique is being provided by a bank in India. The Exim Bank of India is proving a line of credit worth some US$147.7 million for the road upgrade project. Mozambique is seeing steady investment in its infrastructure and this latest project will improve transport links in the country.

There is “no reason for any worries” in the global construction equipment and building material manufacturing industry despite a lack of growth in 2013, according to the German-based VDMA association. In a release issued after the association’s summer board meeting in Hameln, northern Germany, a VDMA spokesperson said, “Bauma, the industry’s leading international fair held in April, in particular helped to change the industry’s mood significantly. Directly or indirectly it led to a great number of new order

IL&FS Transportation Networks (ITNL) has formed a tie-up with Japanese company East Nippon Expressway Company (East Nippon) to jointly undertake highway projects in India through public private partnerships (PPP). Under the tie-up, the partners aim to leverage technology as well as financial assistance from Japan besides carrying out technical and pre-feasibility studies and other related works on potential road projects. ITNL is a subsidiary of infrastructure developer IL&FS.

There is a great deal of innovation across the concrete plant, pump and truck mixer sector. Guy Woodford looks at what some of the sector’s biggest names are offering. CIFA managing director Davide Cipolla believes the Zoomlion-owned Italian firm has “not reached the limit” of what it can offer customers, thanks to a significant investment in research and development. Speaking about a US$2.57 million-a-year (€2million) R&D investment in CIFA and some Zoomlion products over the last five years Cipolla, who i

Road marking manufacturers have many innovative new products either currently being used on major highways or set to be made available within the next couple of years. Guy Woodford reports. Daan Roosegaarde, an artist, and Hans Goris, a manager at Dutch construction and infrastructure firm Heijmans, are developing intriguing new products for the road markings market. One innovation involves painting road markings with glow-in-the-dark paint.

Rare Indian red granite is being extracted from four granite quarries across 24hectares of land in the south Indian villages of Purthagere and Kadur According to legend, Ilkal granite (also known as Cat’s Eye granite) was first discovered 2,000 years ago, but remained a little known rarity for two millennia. This all changed in 1983 when rich deposits were discovered in a small corner of south-west India, allowing Ilkal granite to be exploited for its beauty and decorative worth.

New roads and bridges are part of the US$765 million Salalah International Airport project in Oman RMD Kwikform Oman has supplied Larsen & Toubro Oman with a shoring solution to support construction of the new airport, which, once complete, will cater services for up to 1 million passengers/year. The project will involve the construction of a passenger terminal building, an air traffic control tower, and eight ancillary buildings, roads, and bridges. Located in the southern region of Oman, Salalah is a popu

The Tender Board of Oman has floated, on behalf of the Ministry of Transport and Communications, a prequalification tender for building Section 2 of the Daba-Lima-Khasab carriageway in the country's Musandam Governorate. Section 2 of the Design-Build-Operate (DBO) project involves a 65km stretch between Daba and Alkhalidya. The project will involve 18 valley and wadi bridges covering 3.79km in combined distance, and up to seven tunnels with a joint length of 7.32km. Of the tunnels, the biggest has a length

JCB has announced plans to start production of six-cylinder engines with the addition of the JCB Dieselmax 672 to its world renowned engine line-up. In just over eight years JCB has gone from a new entrant to engine manufacturing to a major global producer with a reputation for fuel efficiency and innovation. The first engine rolled off the production line in the UK in November 2004 and since then production has also extended to JCB India’s HQ at Ballabgarh, where the first engine was manufactured in 2011.

Comer Industries says the new self-propelled 2m³ mobile concrete mixer, equipped with a set of its axles S-128, meets the demands of the Indian market. The new Argo 2000 is a cooperation project between Comer Industries, Fiori Group and the Joint Venture Ajax Fiori Engineering (India), which was launched in 2011 and led to the validation of the product S-128 after a year of field testing. “The self-propelled concrete mixer, having a very high payload, is an off-road vehicle. In any working or transfer condi

A leading WIM system manufacturer is playing a key role in efforts to reduce the number of overloaded trucks costing developing economies around the world billions of dollars in accidents and damage to roads, while another company has won a major contract in South America. Guy Woodford reports. The prevalence of overloaded trucks on the road networks of developing countries and the accidents and structural damage they cause wastes valuable, limited resources in some of the world’s poorest economies, diverti

Thieves in Turkey recently stole a bridge, which is then thought to have been cut up for scrap. The 25m long bridge weighed 22tonnes and was located close to a small village in Turkey’s western province of Kocaeli. When villagers realised the bridge had disappeared they called police who quickly ascertained that the structure had been cut to piece and hauled away for scrap. This follows a similar incident in India when a steel bridge was stolen by enterprising thieves, who convinced locals with forged docum

Croatian construction firm Konstruktor and India’s Simplex Infrastructure are reported to have been awarded a contract worth US$ 335 million (€259.34mn) for the construction of 46km of motorway in Oman. The joint venture project envisages that Konstruktor will hold 48%, while Simplex will own 52% of the project. The deal has been signed with the Ministry of Transport and Telecoms of Sultanata Oman.

Authorities in India’s north-west state of Punjab have approved the upgrade of 11,000km of state link roads for approximately US$306.77 million (INR 17bn). This is in addition to the construction of 637km of roads for $57.81 million (INR 3.19bn) under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), which will see $138.65 million (INR 7.65bn) spent to complete 192 roads by December 2013. Approval was also given to repair and maintain other roads and State highways with $57.09 million (INR 3.15bn).

A US$307 million highway is being built in the state of Jharkhand and West Bengal. This follows an agreement between local firm IL&FS Transportation (IL&FS) and the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). The deal takes the form of a concession package and will be for a 20 year period. The highway is to be constructed in around 30 months and IL&FS will then operate the route on a tolled basis once it is open to traffic. The project forms part of the National Highways Development Project (NHDP) phase V.

Cautious mining customers holding back from investing in equipment is said by Atlas Copco to be a key reason behind an ‘organic’ decline of 11% in the value of its product and service orders and 5% ‘organic’ drop in revenues compared to the same three months of last year. The firm’s orders received value decreased to €2.45 billion (SEK 21,008mn) in Q1 2013 from €2.89 billion (SEK 24,827mn) in Q1 2012. Atlas Copco revenues were €2.36 billion (SEK 20,227mn) in the first three months of 2013, compared to €2.59

A man in India has built a crocodile replica body kit for his motorcycle. Part of a series of modications to the bike costing £540, the new body kit is painted green and features a head with jaws that are able to open and shut as the driver rides. It also has an extended frame allowing it to carry more than one passenger and video footage shows it transporting up to ve adult passengers. Whether the suspension and brakes are able to cope with the additional load has not been revealed but the d

Globally renowned Austrian formwork company Doka has almost tripled its sales revenue in the last 12 years and is aiming for greater success in 2013, according to Group chairman Josef Kurzmann. Kurzmann said the firm recorded sales revenue of €853million in 2012, compared to €326million in 2000. Additionally, the percentage of non-European sales revenue accrued by Doka had increased from 6% in 2000 to 42% in 2012. To achieve further sales revenue growth, Kurzmann said Latin America, North America and India

A new construction equipment show for the emerging markets surfaced today when CONEXPO Latin America was launched by the Milwaukee-based Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM). The trade body said the show was designed to “offer expanded opportunities to connect to markets in Central and South America”.

The new venue for the bC India show is the India Expo Centre in Greater Noida, near Delhi. A total of 170,000m² of exhibition space is available for the bauma/ConExpo event taking place from 15-18 December, 2014. The move to Great Noida follows two successful events held in Mumbai.