Management of Lafarge Nigeria has urged stakeholders in the cement manufacturing sector to cooperate on the need for proper product labelling by manufacturers.
The General Manager, Industrial Performance of the company, Mr. Lanre Opakunle, who gave the advice in Lagos said the step was necessary to address the issue of wrong cement application in the country.
He said there is need to review how cement products were labeled in order to educate end users on the basic steps necessary for right application and results.
“We discovered that the labelling is not adequate today and we made some proposals but those proposals have not been taken on-board but we will keep making efforts to see that they are taken on-board,” he said.
The General Manager disclosed that there was a part on labeling which they highlighted an all-stakeholders deliberations because sometimes people can be naive despite their level of education, adding that right labeling will help to ensure that people have the right information out there at their disposal.
“Lafarge is the only cement manufacturer in the market that puts the uses and specifications of cement on their bags. In our technical submission to SON we said we want to do more than that; we want to really put it in a way that the lay man can understand the uses and what the mix should look like,” he said.
He noted that issues of cement application should not dwell on the grades of cement rather it should be about knowing the right mix as cement does not work in isolation but with sand.
Opakunle, who disclosed that Lafarge was the first to produce 42.5 grade cement in the country, said the company was duly certified by SON in 2012 to that regard.
“Our customers know the value we are giving to them and the value we are adding to their businesses. We really interact with the end users of our products to really understand what they need and how products can be tailored to meet their expectations through innovations from our research centre in Lyon France,” he said.
He stated that the company’s researchers were capable of meeting any desired product behaviour specified by their customers to give them a value added product, noting that it was important to build structures that would represent lasting legacies and also promote environmental sustainability.
“The most widely used individual application of cement in the world is 32.5 and it is important that a user understands how to use whatever grade of cement that is available on the shelf because of certain risks which may maybe associated with these grades whether it is 32.5 or 42.5 and the information should be properly labeled on the bags,” he said.
He announced that the company was making progress and was starting two new plants: one in Ashaka and another one in Calabar. He said that Lafarge also has plans to increase knowledge capacity for artisans and train about 20,000 block makers in 2014 and that so far about 6,000 have already been trained since January.
In his presentation titled “32.5 why the noise” the company’s quality manager, Engr. Adamu Francis, explained that the European and Nigerian standards specify many cement strength classes, while the EN206 was the key standards for defining performance of concrete.
He pointed out that the duty to specify the right grade of cement to be used in any construction work was that of the structural engineers and not the standards regulator.
“The development of standards usually follows a well structured approach and takes about three years to review in other climes like Europe for example and not what we are seeing in Nigeria today which was
started and concluded in less than six months,” he said.
According to him the debate on cement should be on capabilities and not grade type pointing out that the magnificent high rise Petronas twin tower in Malaysia was built with 32.5 grade as well as the massive bridge that links Malaysia and Singapore, while in Nigeria the Lekki free trade zone concrete pavements that efficiently bore construction traffic by 30-40 tonners and recent airport remodeling projects across the country were all constructed using the right application of 32.5 grades of cement.
In another development, three companies; Lafarge, Unicem and Ashaka have sued SON over the disputed new standard order, which was recently introduced to give Industrial Standard Order for cement manufacturing, distribution and usage in the country.
SON, had three weeks ago published a public notice restricting the application of 50kg 32.5R grade of cement to plastering only in syndicated adverts in some national newspapers.
The three aggrieved companies are challenging this order, which they believe will, in no distant future phase out 32.5 cement grade, which has been widely known and used as general purpose cement from the market.
The cement manufacturers are seeking the court to establish whether or not the respondents (SON) have complied with the mandatory provisions of the law for establishing new industrial standard in the introduction of the Commodity Composition and Conformity Criteria for Common Cements and Specification of Mandatory Industrial Standard NIS 444-1 2014.
