AFRICA: Dangote Cement eyes 46.2m metric tonns production in five years

DANGOTE Cement Plc’s merger with the Benue Cement Company Plc may push the firm’s production capacity to 46.2 million metric tons in another five years

According to the conglomerate’s Chief Operating Oficer, Mr. Kunle Alake, the company was planning to raise capacity more than fivefold by 2015 through expansion in anticipation a boom in the construction industry across the continent.

He put the projection at 46.2 million tons by 2015, from the immediate increased capacity of the company’s capacity outside Nigeria to 16.2 million tons by 2015 and to 30 million tons within the West African nation.

The significant rise in the company production capacity, arose from the current modest production of 5.2 million metric tons of cement from the Obajana cement plant and BCC’s three million tons annually.

Alake said: “We’re in South Africa, Zambia, Senegal, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone; we already have terminals in Ghana and we plan to have a grinding mill in Cameroon,” Alake said. The company is also planning to build a plant in Congo Republic.”

The increased production capacity expected to result from the merger of the two entities, was said to have been necessitated by the massive construction of roads, houses, bridges and railways, across countries in Africa, creating demand for the building material market in Nigeria, a financial report which puts the annual demand growth for cement said.

The merged entity’s capacity was expected to exceeds that of Pretoria Portland Cement Co., which till now has been Africa’s largest maker of the building material, with annual capacity of eight million tons in South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe.

Dangote had raised its stake in Sephaku Cement in South Africa, to 64 per cent with the purchase of 779 million shares worth 779 million rand ($112 million) in June.