Breedon has appointed current chief financial officer James Brotherton as its next CEO from 1 January 2027, succeeding Rob Wood after a 12-year tenure with the construction materials group. Brotherton has been CFO since 2021 and co-developed Breedon’s “expand and improve” strategy, which underpinned its expansion into the US market and transfer to the London Stock Exchange’s main market. Wood, who became CEO in 2021, will step down from the board at end-2026 but remain an employee to support the leadership transition until September 2027.

Texas startup Hertha Metals has raised $133.65 million in Series A funding, including $65 million from the US government’s IBAS programme, to build its Hertha Chalyx plant targeting 10,000 tonnes per year of steel-grade and magnet-grade high-purity iron. The facility will deploy the FLEXHERS process—a single continuous hydrogen/natural-gas reduction reactor coupled with electric arc furnace technology—claiming 25% lower production costs than blast furnaces and emissions cuts of 50% (natural gas) to up to 98% (hydrogen). Chalyx, alongside the existing 360 t/y Pi100 pilot in Conroe, aims to create a fully domestic feedstock source for NdFeB magnet and defence manufacturers.

We Recycle Solar will build the US’ first end-to-end critical materials recovery facility for retired solar panels on a 10-acre campus outside Dallas, targeting Q3 2027 start-up. The Arizona-based firm says the commercial-scale plant will process one panel per minute and recover up to 96% of contained silver, copper, silicon, aluminium and glass through a proprietary extraction process that avoids any offshore smelting. WRS plans a further $100 million investment in four additional US facilities within four years, aiming to capture value from an $80 billion projected 2050 solar-panel waste stream.