Nigeria: Dangote Cement has announced that its half-year pretax profit rose by 52.1% to US$669m in 2013 compared with US$436m in the first half of 2012. Dangote said that a Nigerian building boom was behind the rise in profit.
Turnover at Nigeria's largest listed company rose to US$1.23bn during the six months to 30 June 2013, up by 28.5% from US$905m in 2012. The company announced that it expected a pretax profit of US$308m in the third quarter of 2013 from sales of US$603m.
Meanwhile, Reuters has reported that Dangote has announced plans to increase its cement capacity in Nigeria to 29Mt/yr by 2015 from 19.5Mt/yr at present. It added that it wants to expand its capacity to 55Mt/yr across Africa by 2016.
Dangote also reported that cement demand in Nigeria had risen to 11Mt/yr during the first half of 2013, a 14% year-on-year rise compared to the same period of 2012. This, the company said, was caused by a surge in government infrastructure projects.