The US Department of Energy’s TRACE-Ga initiative is awarding about $5.4 million to five firms to design and validate flowsheets to restart primary gallium production, after nearly 40 years of zero domestic output and 100% import reliance under China’s 98% global supply dominance. PHNX Materials will target non-traditional waste streams to co-produce gallium, supplementary cementitious materials, alumina and ammonium sulphate, while Atlantic Alumina and Found Energy will apply counter-current ion exchange, electrochemistry and Direct Bayer Extraction to recover gallium from hot, dilute Bayer liquors. Kunin Technologies aims for a 12 tpa gallium pathway from high-Ga metal streams, and Indium Corporation will build recycling-based recovery from scrap, signalling new process options for alumina refineries and metallurgical residues.

BJD Crushers has appointed former RAF and Ibstock Concrete engineer Steven Kilner as technical sales engineer to support its crusher and materials-handling product lines. Kilner brings experience supervising ground equipment maintenance at RAF Leeming and RAF Coningsby and managing machinery maintenance, site upgrades and capex projects at Ibstock Concrete. His role will centre on reviewing technical data and documentation, interpreting mechanical and materials process requirements, preparing quotations, and working with suppliers and customers to scope equipment solutions and identify growth opportunities.

Former Lafarge chief executive Bruno Lafont has been sentenced by a French court to six years in prison and the company fined more than €1m for developing what the presiding judge called a “genuine commercial partnership with IS” around its £680m Jalabiya cement plant in northern Syria. Lafarge Cement Syria was found to have paid about €5.6m to Islamic State, Jabhat al-Nusra and intermediaries to keep the plant and its supply trucks operating after 2013, when militants controlled the area. The ruling links corporate payments to militant control of local natural resources, raising acute compliance and security-risk questions for construction materials firms operating in conflict zones.