Nigeria: Dangote Cement’s domestic cement sales volumes fell by 11.8% year-on-year to 2.8Mt in the third quarter of 2017 compared to 3.1Mt in the same period in 2016. The company has blamed the fall on the country’s economic recession that ended in the second quarter of 2017.

Overall the group’s sales dropped by 10.1% to 16.5Mt in the first nine months of the year for all regions, despite strong growth outside of Nigeria. Despite this, its revenue rose by 36.5% to US$1.67bn from US$1.23bn in both Nigeria and the rest of Africa for the first three months of 2017. Earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose similarly.

“Dangote Cement has continued to perform strongly in 2017 with revenues up nearly 37%, despite a fall in volumes. In our key operations in Nigeria we have significantly improved our fuel mix and this has helped increase margins across the group. It is especially good for Nigeria because most of the coal we are using is mined in our own country,” said chief executive officer Onne van der Weijde. He added that the cement producer’s other African operations were performing ‘strongly’ with sales growth in Cameroon, Ethiopia and Senegal. It started operations at its 1.5Mt/yr Mfila cement plant in Republic of Congo in late September 2017.