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Zimbabwe’s immediate ban on exports of raw minerals, including lithium concentrates, is expected by Fitch’s BMI to tighten the lithium market only temporarily, with Zimbabwe currently supplying about 10% of global output and mine production now forecast at 131,100 tonnes LCE in 2026. Huayou Cobalt’s Arcadia plant, due online shortly, will process only its own concentrates, leaving other operators such as Sinomine Resources’ Bikita mine and the state-owned Kamativi mine to curb production until their planned lithium sulphate plants ramp up from mid-to-late 2027. BMI has lifted its 2026 Chinese lithium carbonate and hydroxide price forecasts to $13,500/tonne and $13,000/tonne respectively, warning that prolonged disruptions could sustain higher prices.

The Construction Industry Council has updated its health & safety certification, delivered via Accredex, to embed the new dutyholder, competence and accountability requirements of the Building Safety Act for profession-specific roles across the built environment. Aimed at professionals who only occasionally visit site, the online course offers five CPD hours and is recognised as an approved route to AQP/PQP CSCS and SKILLcard, and to a CSCS Red Trainee Card for those on academic programmes. CIC will introduce the revised course in a free webinar at 12:30 on Monday 16th March.

Galliford Try has secured a £60m Defence Infrastructure Organisation contract to build a new munitions handling facility for the US Air Force at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk. The scheme comprises three new munitions buildings providing storage, testing, maintenance and administrative space, forming a critical element of the base’s weapons logistics. This first USAF commission for Galliford Try builds on its previous RAF projects at Marham and Coningsby, signalling continued demand for complex, secure defence infrastructure in eastern England.

Breedon has completed its acquisition of Booth Precast Products in Abbeyleix, County Laois, adding a long-established sand and gravel quarry and processing plant that has supplied the Irish construction market for over 25 years. The deal, agreed in December 2025 and cleared by the Republic of Ireland’s Competition Authority, secures additional mineral reserves to serve the growing Dublin market. Integration of Booth’s concrete operations gives Breedon Ireland a more vertically integrated aggregates-to-concrete supply chain for regional infrastructure and building projects.

Caddick Construction Group has appointed former Wates north commercial director Mark Kearney as commercial director for its specialist subcontracting arms CCL Facades and Caddick Civil Engineering, based across the Wakefield and Durham offices. Kearney, who previously spent 25 years with Keepmoat and later Engie following its 2017 acquisition, is tasked with driving growth by tightening internal efficiencies, systems and processes, and aligning commercial strategy with the managing directors. The move signals a push to sharpen work-winning strategy and scale subcontracting turnover while maintaining sustainable delivery capacity.

Work has started on a £24m regeneration in Derker, Oldham, where Seddon will build 132 carbon-neutral homes across five brownfield sites for Hive Homes, funded by Greater Manchester Combined Authority and the Brownfield Land Fund. The scheme combines 21 affordable rent units, 23 shared ownership and 88 open-market properties, using timber frames, roof-mounted solar PV and smart energy systems, plus whole-house heat recycling to exceed the Future Homes Standard. Phased delivery runs from first completions at London Road in October 2026 to full build-out by spring 2028.

Red Construction Group is targeting expansion in luxury hospitality work, appointing former InterContinental Hotels Group capital projects lead Michael Walsh as strategic director to build on schemes such as the refurbishment of London’s St Pancras Renaissance Hotel. The London-based contractor has also hired its first full-time group finance director, ex-Kier senior finance leader Alastair Gordon-Stewart, as turnover climbs towards a £200m target (up from £115m in 2024 to £171m last year). The reshaped leadership is geared to controlled growth and tighter financial governance rather than rapid volume chasing.

Bovis Construction (Europe) has secured a £200m PCSA to refurbish and extend 10 Paternoster Square, home of the London Stock Exchange, including a new glass atrium making the daily market opening and closing ceremonies visible from the public realm. The scheme adds roof extensions, an events pavilion and multiple terraces and balconies with views over St Paul’s Cathedral, while retaining more than 95% of the existing structural frame and façade in line with circular economy principles. The project targets BREEAM Excellent and NABERS 5* ratings, with completion due in Q4 2028.

Kier has reported its first average net cash position in 13 years, ending HY26 with £16.8m net cash versus £37.6m net debt a year earlier, on revenue of £2,012m and a 14% rise in pre-tax profit to £32.6m. The order book has reached a record £11.6bn, covering 94% of forecast full-year revenue, with Infrastructure Services revenue up 5% to £1,083m and operating profit up 9% to £37.8m, while Construction revenue slipped 1% to £920m and operating profit fell 12% to £25.6m. Backed by sustained cash generation, the board has completed a £20m share buyback, approved a further £25m programme over 12 months, and increased the interim dividend.

The British Board of Agrément has had its UKAS accreditation temporarily suspended from 26 February 2026, preventing it from issuing new certificates under accredited status for now. UKAS’ action stems from a 2025 change in the BBA’s corporate structure and relates solely to administrative documentation, not to technical competence or testing capability. Existing certification work, including BBA Agrément assessments used by product manufacturers to evidence compliance with UK and Eurocode-based standards, is continuing while the documentation issues are resolved.

The New Hospital Programme has appointed 10 major contractors, including Skanska Construction UK, Laing O’Rourke Delivery, Kier Construction and Integrated Health Projects (Sir Robert McAlpine/Vinci JV), to a 12‑year Hospital 2.0 Alliance framework for new hospitals in England worth an estimated £37bn. The alliance will use a standardised, industrialised delivery model intended to give contractors a long, predictable pipeline for offsite manufacture, repeatable clinical layouts and modular MEP solutions. For civil and structural teams, the framework signals large‑scale, repeatable hospital platforms where groundworks, substructures and envelope systems can be optimised and replicated across multiple sites.

Scottish Water has published its final SR27 business plan proposing £13.4bn of investment between 2027 and 2033, prioritising asset maintenance and system resilience rather than major new capacity. The programme targets ageing water and wastewater infrastructure exposed to climate-driven extremes, including higher-intensity rainfall and drought risk, and to shifting population centres that are stressing existing networks. For civil and geotechnical designers, this signals a pipeline of rehabilitation works on buried mains, treatment works structures and flood resilience upgrades, with a premium on long-life materials and constructability on constrained brownfield sites.

National Highways is entering the final phase of a £25M technology upgrade to the A38 Saltash Tunnel, a key 410m route under the River Tamar linking Plymouth and south‑east Cornwall, with major civil works now complete and new safety systems being commissioned. Engineers are installing upgraded tunnel control, ventilation and fire‑safety equipment, alongside improved CCTV and incident detection, to modernise an asset that carries high seasonal traffic loads. The works aim to reduce unplanned closures and improve resilience for this strategic single‑bore road tunnel.

Government officials have rejected claims from MPs that the Department for Business and Trade has been holding undisclosed meetings with Chinese steelmaker Jingye, owner of British Steel’s Scunthorpe works. The dispute comes amid ongoing uncertainty over UK steel capacity, with concerns about blast furnace closures, future electric arc furnace investment, and security of supply for major infrastructure schemes requiring long-span bridge girders, heavy plate and rail sections. For civil contractors and designers, any disruption to domestic steel output could affect procurement risk, lead times and price volatility on large projects.

Rock Tech Lithium and Siemens Canada have signed a non-binding MoU to develop digitalised lithium conversion capacity for Rock Tech’s planned converter in Ontario, using Siemens’ Xcelerator portfolio, including COMOS, gPROMS and PCS 7 for integrated engineering and process control. The partnership targets model-based design, advanced process simulation and automation across multiple project phases, aiming to optimise energy use, reagent consumption and plant uptime. For engineers, this signals early integration of OEM-grade digital twins and control architecture into a greenfield lithium chemicals facility in Canada’s critical minerals supply chain.

Rio Tinto is proceeding with construction of a pilot plant in Quebec to extract primary gallium from its alumina refining process, backed by a conditionally approved contribution from Natural Resources Canada under the Global Partnerships Initiative. The project, developed with Indium Corporation, follows successful first gallium extraction in May 2025 using process streams from Rio Tinto’s alumina refineries. If scaled, the technology could turn refinery residue and intermediate liquors into a new critical metal stream without major changes to existing Bayer process infrastructure.

Florence Copper in Arizona has produced its first copper cathodes from Taseko Mines’ new commercial in-situ copper recovery (ICSR) operation coupled with a solvent extraction/electrowinning (SX/EW) plant, following electrowinning start-up in late February. The project uses in-situ leaching of a deep porphyry deposit and on-site SX/EW to generate LME-grade cathode without a concentrator, tailings storage facility or smelter. For geotechnical and hydrogeological teams, the move to full commercial ICSR-SX/EW operation sharpens focus on leach-wellfield design, solution containment and long-term groundwater management.

Core Lithium has advanced plans to restart its Finniss lithium mine in the Northern Territory by signing a binding offtake and funding agreement with Glencore and appointing experienced mining executive Gareth Manderson as managing director. The Glencore deal is expected to support recommissioning of the Grants open pit and dense media separation plant, which were placed in care and maintenance in 2023 amid weak spodumene prices. For geotechnical and processing teams, the restart signals renewed demand for pit wall stability reviews, tailings and waste dump design updates, and rapid ramp-up of spodumene concentrate production.

High-grade niobium intersections from infill drilling at WA1 Resources’ Luni project in Western Australia have been returned directly adjacent to the existing indicated mineral resource, confirming continuity of the core high-grade zone. The results support ongoing resource definition and mine planning for a potential open-pit operation targeting niobium, with drilling focused on tightening spacing around previously reported high-grade hits. For geotechnical and mine design teams, the new data will refine pit shell optimisation, slope design assumptions and scheduling for early high-grade feed.

Victory Metals has announced a significant mineral resource upgrade at its North Stanmore heavy rare earth elements project in Western Australia after deploying a new flotation flowsheet described as a “game-changer”. The process targets clay-hosted mineralisation and reportedly improves recovery of key heavy rare earths such as dysprosium and terbium compared with earlier leach-only testwork. For geometallurgy and plant design, the results point to a viable flotation-based route for fine-grained, ion-adsorption-style clays, potentially reducing reagent consumption and tailings volumes.

First Phosphate has secured conditional approval for a non-repayable contribution of up to C$16.7 million from Natural Resources Canada’s Global Partnerships Initiative to advance engineering and processing circuit studies for LFP-grade phosphate concentrate at its integrated Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean project in Quebec. The work will focus on validating flowsheets and equipment to convert ore from the Bégin-Lamarche deposit, which hosts 41.5 million indicated tonnes at 6.49% P2O5 plus 214 million inferred tonnes at 6.01% P2O5, into high-purity phosphoric acid (PPA) and iron phosphate. First Phosphate also plans a 10,000 t/y iron phosphate plant 20 km from the deep-sea port of Saguenay, targeting a vertically integrated LFP cathode materials supply chain.

Rio Tinto has lifted the suspension on Richards Bay Minerals’ Zulti South project in South Africa, approving a US$473 million investment to extend the heavy mineral sands operation’s life to around 2050. Engineering, procurement and construction for Zulti South has been awarded to China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC), signalling a major Chinese contractor role in a Tier 1 titanium dioxide feedstock and zircon asset. The project will shift production from the existing Zulti North lease, with long-term implications for dredge mining layouts, tailings deposition and coastal dune rehabilitation planning.

MacLean Engineering has secured C$2.5 million from Natural Resources Canada to advance its battery-electric vehicle R&D programme, centred on the GR8 EV Grader for underground mining. Announced at the Canadian Critical Minerals Forum during PDAC 2026 in Toronto, the funding targets development of a fully electric, high-drawbar grader platform for ramp and level maintenance. The project is expected to refine battery pack design, duty-cycle energy management and traction control for heavy underground support equipment.

Eriez will showcase integrated tramp metal control and feeding systems at CONEXPO-CON/AGG 2026, combining suspended electromagnets, metal detectors and eddy current separators with vibratory feeders for mines and quarries. The company is targeting higher-tonnage operations where crusher and conveyor damage from bucket teeth, drill steel and other ferrous contaminants drives costly unplanned shutdowns. For plant engineers, the focus is on upstream removal and controlled feed to primary and secondary crushers to stabilise throughput and protect high-value components.