Displaying items by tag: Nigeria

Nigeria: David Umahi, the governor of Ebonyi state, has approved plans to set-up the Ebonyi Cement plant (Ebocem) at Ogboto in Ishielu. The local government will hold a 10% stake in the project, according to the Nigerian Tribune newspaper.

Nigeria: Sinoria FABCOM, a Chinese building materials and structural engineering firm, has announced plans to open a fibre cement board manufacturing factory in Abuja. The company, which is part of the Chinese global giant Sinoma, already has an industrial complex in Kuje Abuja, where it makes roofing products.

Liuxing Wang, Managing Director of Sinoria FABCOM, said that the new line of products would be the first of their kind to be manufactured in West Africa. He added that his company had decided to diversify into fibre cement board due to Nigeria’s raw materials and the success that it has already had with its stone-coated roofing sheets in the country.

Wang further commended the administration of President Mohammadu Buhari for creating the ‘right atmosphere for industrial growth’ of the country, noting that within the next decade Nigeria stands the chance of becoming an industrial giant.

Benin: Aliko Dangote, the chairman of Nigeria’s Dangote Cement, raised the issue his company has with exporting cement to Benin. He said this company could not export cement to Benin despite its Ibese plant in Nigeria being under 30km from the border, according to the Vanguard newspaper. He alleged that the country was importing ‘more expensive’ cement from China instead.

Dangote made the comments in an interview with Mo Ibrahim at the 2019 Ibrahim Governance Weekend in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. He also said that he looked forward to the Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) making trade easier in the region.

Ivory Coast: Dangote Cement is building a 3Mt/yr cement plant with two production lines from an investment of around US$260m in the Ivory Coast. In an audience with Souleymane Diarrassouba, Minister of Commerce, Industry and Promotion of SMEs, the company said that the project is 70% complete, according to the Agence Ivoirienne de Presse. The new plant will create 800 jobs. It is scheduled to start production in early 2020.

Nigeria: BUA Group has signed a contract with Finland’s Wartsila Oy for construction of a 48MW power plant for Line 3 at its Sokoto Cement plant in Sokoto State. The announcement of the deal follows BUA’s January 2019 announcement that China’s CBMI would build the new line at the site.

Abdul Samad Rabiu , the executive chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of BUA Group, signed on behalf of the group while Wartsila’s Head of Africa Magnus Miemois signed for the power plant provider.

BUA is Nigeria’s second-largest cement producer by volume, with assets that include the 6Mt/yr Obu Cement I & II plants in Okpella, Edo State, CCNN’s 1.5Mt/yr Kalambaina plant and the 0.5Mt/yr Sokoto cement plant.

Nigeria: Aliko Dangote, the president of Dangote Cement, says that his company is targeting exports of US$600m/yr to sub-Saharan Africa. He made the comments at the Dangote Cement Distributors’ Award Night in Lagos, according to the Nigerian Guardian newspaper. He added that Dangote Cement will become the largest exporter of cement in the region in 2019. It plans to focus on African countries with limited limestone reserves. The company is building new terminals at Onne and in Lagos. He also expressed hope that congestion at the Port of Apapa would be cleared soon to help the company meet its export targets.

Nigeria: Domestic sales growth drove Dangote Cement’s financial results in 2018. Its local cement sales volumes grew by 11.4% year-on-year to 14.2Mt in 2019 from 12.7Mt in 2018. Sales in the rest of Africa remained stable at 9.4Mt. Sales revenue grew by 11.9% to US$1.71bn in Nigeria and by 9.6% to US$784m in the rest of Africa. Overall revenue grew by 11.9% to US$2.49bn from US$2.23bn. Earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) increased by 12.1% to US$1.20bn from US$1.07bn.

“This is a record financial performance by Dangote Cement, driven by a strong increase in our home market, Nigeria, despite heavy rains and uncertainties about the election,” said Joe Makoju, group chief executive officer. He added that, although Pan-African volumes were unchanged in 2018, he was confident that the group would see an increase in 2019, driven by higher volumes in Tanzania, Ethiopia, Congo and Sierra Leone. Elsewhere in Africa the cement producer said that plant shutdowns in Tanzania due to delays to a gas turbine installation, civil unrest in Ethiopia and a reduction of imports from Nigeria to Ghana had reduced its sales.

Trinidad: Austria’s Unitherm Cemcon has been awarded the contract for a rotary kiln burner for kiln 3 at Trinidad Cement’s 1230t/day plant. The burner for the wet process unit will be designed for natural gas and liquid alternative fuel. No value for the order has been disclosed.

The scope of supply includes: one MAS/5/EGSO model rotary kiln burner; a flame monitoring device for the rotary kiln burner; a gas electric ignition burner with control box and touch screen; kiln burner trolley engineering and main components for local manufacturing; primary air fan with sound protection housing; and an emergency cooling air fan.

Other recent projects from Unitherm Cemcon include the commissioning of a firing system for BUA Cement’s new plant in Edo State, Nigeria and delivery of firing equipment for a project in Argentina in late 2018.

Nigeria: Dangote Cement has appointed Guillaume Moyen as its chief financial officer (CFO) for operations. He was the CFO of UAE-based OLA Energy from 2014 to early 2019, according to Bloomberg. He will report to group CFO Brian Egan.

Nigeria: Ashaka Cement, a subsidiary of Lafarge Africa, is set to inaugurate a 16MW power plant project in a bid to improve the reliablilty of its energy supply. Managing Director Rabiu Abdullah Umar said that the company would invest US$30.5m in the project. “We are helping to remove ourselves from the (national) demand for energy and providing our own solution,” he said. “This means a minimum of 16MW of electricity will now become available to the public grid for the people in the region to enjoy.”