Last month we launched ASK LEX, where we invited you to send in business related questions to Lex Russell, Managing Director of UK Materials. We want all of our employees to feel they can ask questions of our business leaders and receive transparent answers.

Thank you to those who have sent in questions so far. Where relevant, we will share questions and responses from Lex in future UK News editions.

Here is another question sent in for Lex, along with Lex’s response:

Q: Many years ago CEMEX introduced the Fuel Surcharge mechanism in order to track any spikes in the price of fuel at the pumps, and accordingly pass these on to our customers. For the last 10 years, as the price of fuel has remained largely stable, this figure has not moved beyond zero. However, we continued to include it as a separate line on the invoice to ‘prepare’ our customers. 

Over the last 12 months, the price of fuel has increased significantly, and yet we have never ‘activated’ this mechanism. In fact, it seems to have been forgotten about completely as the increases in our fuel costs have instead been recovered through standard price increases. 

If we are to continue to recover increased fuel costs through price increases, can we remove the Fuel Surcharge mechanism entirely from customer invoices and quotations? 

A: We are currently working on this along with generally simplifying and standardising our T&Cs, quoting and invoicing. Terri Charles is again leading this initiative.

If you have a question, simply send it through to [email protected] and the Communications team will manage this directly with Lex. Written answers will then be provided back to you and, if appropriate, shared in UK News for others to read.

Please note that questions cannot be handled anonymously.  We look forward to hearing from you!