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Exploration activity across Australia remains strong, with Aureka, Stelar Metals and Western Mines Group all advancing drilling and field programmes targeting gold, tungsten and nickel. Aureka has started an infill diamond drilling campaign at the St Arnaud Comstock project in Victoria to upgrade resource confidence, signalling a move towards more detailed geological modelling and potential resource estimation. Parallel work by Stelar Metals and Western Mines Group on tungsten and nickel prospects points to continued funding and technical focus on critical and battery metals exploration.

Sale of the Whyalla Steelworks in South Australia has entered its final phase, with M Resources and India’s Jindal Steel shortlisted as bidders while BlueScope Steel holds a right of last offer over the asset. The outcome will shape future investment in Whyalla’s integrated blast furnace–basic oxygen furnace operation and associated port and rail logistics, which are critical for regional iron ore value-adding. For miners and contractors, ownership changes could alter coke, pellet and scrap demand profiles and influence local steel supply for major infrastructure projects.

Three developments this week show Australian critical minerals projects are now tightly bound to geopolitics, with the Quad partnership (Australia, US, Japan, India) pushing diversification of lithium, rare earths and other supply chains away from China. New trade and national security settings are shaping project finance, offtake agreements and processing locations, particularly for downstream refining of rare earth oxides and battery precursors. For miners, permitting, capital access and long-term contracts increasingly depend on alignment with allied strategic and diplomatic priorities, not just ore grades and IRRs.

Rolls-Royce has selected Škoda JS and Doosan Enerbility to deliver key nuclear island components, including reactor pressure vessel bodies, for its Small Modular Reactor (SMR) programme. The Czech and Korean suppliers will carry out pre‑production, design finalisation and manufacturing readiness work to secure long‑lead items and enable “designed for manufacture” reactor hardware. Initial SMR units are planned for Wylfa in the UK and Temelín in the Czech Republic, with a standardised fleet model intended to industrialise reactor build and stabilise long‑term supply chains.

Balfour Beatty has secured an £83m contract from Hub North Scotland to build the 12,143 m² Forres Academy secondary school in Moray for Moray Council, designed for 1,120 pupils under Phase 3 of the Scottish Government’s Learning Estate Investment Programme. The campus will include a full-size 3G artificial grass pitch and new car parking, replacing the existing school on the site. Delivery will draw on Balfour Beatty’s previous Moray school projects at Elgin High, Lossiemouth High and Linkwood Primary, with Hub North Scotland signalling additional training, employment and community benefits.

Rail infrastructure specialist GBR-Price Group has secured Barclays funding to buy its first owned premises, moving from rented facilities to support expansion of UK-wide rail track installation, platform construction and depot development. The group operates through four specialist businesses, with GBR-Price Rail Limited as the main delivery arm, and currently employs about 250 staff with turnover of roughly £15m in 2025. Owning a permanent base is intended to increase operational stability and capacity as demand for specialist rail engineering services continues to grow.

Oregon Timber Frame has completed the final phase of a £25m expansion at its Selkirk HQ, adding north and south factory extensions to 69,000 sq ft and 25,000 sq ft respectively and installing two automated panel lines to lift output from 3,500 to 5,000 timber frame house kits per year. Barratt Redrow plans to push capacity to 9,000 kits annually within two to three years, supported by 50 new manufacturing roles and up to 30 support posts, taking production capacity up 43%. A separate £40m, 187,000 sq ft factory in Derby, opened in 2023, underpins wider rollout of timber frame systems across England.

Heidelberg Materials UK and Kenson Highways have rebuilt Heathcote Avenue in Redbridge using evoZero carbon‑captured cement from Brevik, Norway, and low‑carbon asphalt mixes to cut embodied emissions. The scheme used 275 tonnes of binder course with 25% reclaimed asphalt and 6.5% ACLA, plus 248 tonnes of surface course containing CarbonLock bio‑binder produced via the Era 140 warm mix process at up to 40°C lower temperature. Initial calculations show more than 75 tonnes of CO₂ saved, with evoZero cement alone delivering over 35% of the reduction.

Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation has launched a search for a private sector partner for a £12bn, 20‑year joint venture to deliver the HS2 Old Oak Common‑linked regeneration. The partner will help masterplan and phase major rail‑led infrastructure, utilities and public realm over the two‑decade build‑out, integrating with the high‑speed and conventional rail interchange. For civil and geotechnical teams, the scale and duration signal long‑term demand for ground engineering, rail interface works and high‑density urban foundations on a constrained brownfield site.

Kubota dealer Lister Wilder has opened a new Salisbury depot at Lopcombe with four full-length service bays sized for the new 14‑tonne U145 excavator, doubling workshop capacity over its previous local site. Parts storage is four times larger than before, supporting £3m of stock and inter‑depot deliveries, with 60 mobile service engineers and three on‑site technicians as the firm recruits further service staff. The location is configured to support construction equipment customers from Lyme Regis to Bognor Regis and north to Marlborough and Newbury.

Graham has opened a new office in Cleator Moor, Cumbria, to support long-term nuclear infrastructure work including infrastructure upgrades at the Low Level Waste Repository in Drigg, where its team is committed on site until summer 2029. The premises will expand operational capacity for Graham’s civil engineering division and provide a shared base for its nationally operating building division, which already has multiple schemes in the North. Led by contracts director Alastair Lewis, the office is intended to put permanent staff “boots on the ground” and anchor local recruitment for nuclear and defence projects.

Italian telehandler manufacturer Faresin has entered a strategic partnership with French Caterpillar dealer Bergerat Monnoyeur to distribute its machines, including 100% electric models, across construction, industrial and agricultural sectors in France. The agreement brings low-emission, low-noise telehandlers into Bergerat Monnoyeur’s portfolio, targeting work in sensitive urban and industrial environments where conventional diesel plant faces tighter constraints. Customers are promised integrated product supply with technical support, connected services and local dealer presence, which could simplify fleet decarbonisation planning on mixed Cat–Faresin sites.

Liebherr Nenzing has launched an AI-based app to identify parts and schedule maintenance for its deep foundation equipment and crawler cranes up to 400 t capacity. Components can be located via photo recognition, QR code scan, multilingual text search in over 100 languages, or item number, with results cross-checked against the official Liebherr parts catalogue to avoid mis-orders when nameplates are damaged. The app also uses machine operating hours to propose upcoming service intervals, listing required parts, consumables and fluids in optimised quantities for each maintenance kit.

Maraen Port of Nigg has awarded McLaughlin & Harvey a £30m contract, supported by a £10m Highlands and Islands Enterprise grant, to build the Eastern Inner Dock Quay (EIDQ) to service Scottish offshore wind projects. The works will focus on heavy-duty quay construction and ground-bearing capacity upgrades to handle large turbine components and installation vessels. For civil and geotechnical teams, the project signals continued demand for high-capacity quayside foundations and pavements tailored to offshore wind logistics in constrained dock environments.

AtkinsRéalis has secured a five-year professional services framework with EDF and Sizewell C, extending its existing role on the Hinkley Point C nuclear new-build. The appointment covers continued engineering and technical support for Hinkley Point C’s twin EPR units and adds a new scope at Sizewell C, which is intended to replicate much of Hinkley’s design. For geotechnical, civil and structural teams, this signals sustained demand for nuclear-grade design, verification and constructability input across both major UK coastal sites.

Paragon has rebranded as Tilbury Douglas Fit Out, consolidating the group’s Cat A and Cat B fit-out, internal refurbishment, workplace transformation and technically led interior delivery services under a single Tilbury Douglas identity. Managing director Jack Dixon, appointed in December 2025, said the move is intended to align the specialist fit-out arm with the wider contractor’s reputation and give clients greater confidence in complex interior projects. CEO Craig Tatton reported an order book now exceeding £1.6bn, framing the rebrand as part of a five-year growth plan across the UK.

Keltbray chief executive Karl Goose is leaving the specialist engineering and construction group by mutual agreement after just over nine months in the role, having joined from Ferrovial in August 2025 following a 26‑year career there. Executive vice chairman Peter Burnside, formerly Keltbray’s chief financial officer and with eight years at the company, will take over as CEO, bringing two decades of prior collaboration with executive chair Brendan Kerr. The leadership change comes as Keltbray continues to pursue its existing group strategy and expansion into new UK and international markets.

A 2.5‑tonne Volvo ECR25D excavator advertised on Irish auction site Donedeal was stolen from Redmond Machinery & Motors after fraudsters used cloned company details from a Northern Ireland firm, falsified bank transfer confirmations and anonymous online communication to “purchase” and move the machine across the border within two hours. The excavator is now recorded on The Equipment Register (TER), a European stolen plant database, whose head of recoveries Gareth Barkwill warns that organised criminals are using increasingly sophisticated impersonation and payment documentation. For plant owners and buyers, rigorous ID checks and TER searches on pre‑owned machinery are becoming critical due diligence.

Bridgestone has launched three underground mining tyre lines – VMNT, VMDL and VMMS – engineered for abrasive rock, high moisture and continuous-duty load–haul–dump and underground truck cycles. The designs target longer wear life and reduced heat build-up under low-ventilation conditions typical of deep mines, aiming to cut tyre change-outs and unplanned stoppages. For mine operators, the range signals more options for matching tyre compounds and carcass designs to specific underground duty profiles rather than adapting surface-mine products.

Birmingham Airport (BHX) head of planning, transport and strategy Nikki Baines set out how a coordinated surface access strategy is being used to sequence major civils investment and build long-term operational resilience. Her approach links highway and rail connectivity upgrades with terminal and apron capacity planning, so that junction layouts, public transport interchanges and car park configurations are sized and phased against forecast passenger growth. For engineers, the message is that early, data-led access modelling can de-risk later airside works, reduce retrofit of road layouts and protect resilience during construction.

Completion of the highest activity radioactive waste management programme at the Trawsfynydd nuclear power station in north Wales marks a key decommissioning milestone after roughly 20 years of work. High‑risk materials from the Magnox-era site have now been retrieved, conditioned and placed into shielded intermediate-level waste stores designed for long-term containment and future transfer to a geological disposal facility. The shift away from active waste handling allows decommissioning teams to focus on structural dismantling, civil works on reactor buildings and progressive reduction of radiological hazards on site.

The UK highways sector is updating the 10-year-old Well-managed Highway Infrastructure code to capture changes in asset management, risk-based maintenance and funding pressures since its last issue. AtkinsRéalis technical director (highways) is helping steer revisions on lifecycle planning, whole-life cost modelling and resilience of pavements, structures and drainage to more frequent extreme weather. For asset owners and term-maintenance contractors, the refresh signals closer alignment of inspection regimes, condition data, and intervention levels with current DMRB standards and local authority budget constraints.

Work has begun on a £3.2M scheme to strengthen a 132‑year‑old railway bridge in Leeds, ensuring it remains safe and serviceable for both rail and highway traffic. The project focuses on replacing key bridge sections and upgrading structural elements to carry modern train loadings while maintaining road clearance beneath. For geotechnical and structural teams, the works imply careful staging around live rail operations and constrained urban access, with close control of temporary works and differential movement between new and existing fabric.

Cameco has restored full production at the McArthur River uranium mine and Key Lake mill in northern Saskatchewan after flooding earlier in May partially collapsed the Smoothstone River bridge, severing the main haul route between the two sites. Key Lake output was halted on 10 May and McArthur River activity reduced, with weight and traffic limits on an alternate road constraining deliveries of operating supplies. The company is working with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Highways on permanent access restoration and is maintaining its 2026 production guidance of 19.5–21.5 million lb U₃O₈.