Boral consolidates Australian construction and cement divisions
Building materials producer Boral Ltd has said it will consolidate its Australian construction materials and cement segments into one Australian division as part of ongoing restructuring initiatives.
As a result of the merger, Joseph Goss has been appointed Divisional Managing Director, Boral Construction Materials and Cement, effective 1 April 2013. Mr Murray Read’s position of Divisional Managing Director, Boral Construction Materials will be made redundant and Mr Read will leave the organisation on 1 July 2013, following a transition period.
Boral’s CEO and Managing Director, Mike Kane, said: “The consolidation of construction materials and
cement into a single division is the next step of Boral’s restructuring initiatives and reinforces the
importance of these Australian businesses in the Group’s portfolio. Just as Boral’s aggregate business
integrates downstream into our concrete and asphalt operations, and our bitumen supply flows into our
asphalt business, Boral’s cement business provides a strategically important input into Boral’s concrete
operations. It therefore makes sense to bring these operations together under one leadership team."
At the start of this year Boral announced a further round of job cuts, predominantly across its Australian operation. Some 700 functional, operational support and managerial positions jobs in Australia were to be lost. Of those 700, some 200 had already occurred in late 2012, with the majority of redundancies expected to be completed by March 2013. New South Wales is to bear the brunt of the cuts, accounting for a third of the job losses, with 20 per cent of the reductions coming from Victoria and Queensland and the balance spread across the rest of the country. An additional 300 production jobs in Australia (185) and the US (115) are to be axed, including the 90 previously-announced job cuts as part of the decision to end clinker production at Waurn Ponds in Victoria, announced last month. Mr Kane predicted the move would save AUD90m a year, with estimated savings of AUD37m to be delivered in FY2013.
