Displaying items by tag: Dangote Cement

Niger: Aliko Dangote, head of Dangote Cement, intends to build a US$350m cement plant with a production capacity of 1.5Mt/yr in Niger. Dangote made the comments to Reuters following a meeting with President Issoufou Mahamadou in Niamey on 16 October 2013. The project will create 6000 to 7000 jobs. The plant will include a captive power plant with surplus electricity to be sold to the local power grid.

Niger currently has one cement plant, Société Nigérienne de Cimenterie, with a production capacity of 0.04Mt/yr.

Nigeria: Dangote has ordered a new vertical roller mill from Loesche for a new project, Ibese 7, at its Ibese cement plant. The mill is the 13th mill the Nigerian cement producer has ordered from Loesche for Ibese.

The order is for a LM 63.3+3 vertical roller mill for grinding clinker with components such as gypsum and limestone. The product rate of clinker type CEM I will be 310t/hr at 3200 blaine while the product rate of clinker type CEM II will be 295t/hr at 4500 blaine. The gearbox capacity for the LM 63.3+3 will be 6700kW.

In addition to the mill Loesche will deliver a LF 20 (burner dual-fuel HFO / NG) hot gas generator and all the mechanical equipment between the mill pre-bins and the product bucket elevator. Loesche will also supply all electrical equipment and automation, the building steel structure and the detail engineering of the civil works. A latest generation type LDC classifier will also be delivered by Loesche. Commissioning is scheduled for the end of April 2014.

Kenya: Dangote Cement has released plans to build a US$400m cement plant in Kenya, according to the president's office of Kenya. Dangote's CEO Alhaji Aliko Dangote was part of a three-day state visit by Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan to the east African country to build bilateral trade agreements. No further information on timescales or production capacity was released.

Nigeria: One worker was killed on 31 July 2013 at the Dangote Cement Gboko plant when he was hit by falling limestone, according to the All Africa Media Group. The deceased labourer, Solomon Ashir, was killed instantly.

Ashir was from the local community, which reacted angrily towards Dangote following his death. Many were of the opinion that health and safety measures at the plant had been deficient.

Bonfires were lit on the roads used to access the plant in the hope of trapping key staff members in the plant and Ashir's body was even carried into the office of the local Assistant General Manager (AGM) in charge of mines. He had fled the office in fear for his life before the protesters arrived.

Local media reported that Dangote representatives took the body to the local hospital after the protesters had vacated the office. Dangote's community relations manager could not be reached for comment.

Meanwhile, Benue State Police Public Relations Officer, Daniel Ezeala, confirmed that the incident had taken place and said that an investigation into the cause of the incident was underway.

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.

South Africa: Sephaku Holdings has reported that it is on schedule to commence production of cement at its associate company, Sephaku Cement, in the first two quarters of 2014. Sephaku Cement is a subsidiary of Nigerian multinational cement producer Dangote Cement. In its nine-month financial report to 31 March 2013 Sephaku reported that construction of the US$320m Delmas grinding plant and the Aganang clinker and cement plant were both at an advanced stage of development at end of 2012.

The Delmas cement milling plant in Mpumalanga will receive approximately 55% of the clinker produced at Aganang for further processing and is on track for completion in the final quarter of 2013, with production due to start in January 2014. The Delmas plant will have annual cement production capacity of 1.4Mt/yr. The Aganang plant in North West Province will commence production in the second quarter of 2014 with the capacity to produce 1.9Mt/yr of clinker and 1.2Mt/yr of cement when fully commissioned.

In the global cement news this week, we see that PPC (the former Pretoria Portland Cement), a large-scale domestic player in the South African cement industry, has taken it upon itself to provide association-like services to cement and concrete consumers in the country. PPC says that it felt obliged to supply information on things like quantity analysis, setting advice and product testing in the place of the now-defunct Cement and Concrete Institute (CCI).

The CCI, lambasted by PPC and other cement producers for years, was accused in April 2013 by PPC of not providing the kind of advice and services that cement producers should expect from an association. PPC, Lafarge and AfriSam all pulled funding and the CCI collapsed.

If the CCI had simply ceased to exist, PPC's new stance, putting its own cash into industry-wide assistance, might be seen as laudable. However, the CCI has been re-born as the Concrete Institute (CI), an organisation that is, by its own admission, no longer on the lookout for the interests of the whole industry. The CI is largely backed by Sephaku Cement, itself majority owned by the Nigerian cement juggernaut Dangote Cement, making PPC's stance suddenly look like one of self-preservation. Dangote is making rapid progress in the sub-Saharan cement industry and firms like PPC cannot afford to let it sweep aside the status-quo in South Africa.

The speed and scale of Dangote's rise, covered previously in this column, is huge. Nigeria's largest company now has interests in Senegal, Zambia, Tanzania, Congo, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast and Liberia as well as Nigeria and South Africa. Not a month goes by without the announcement of another upgrade, plant or project. Dangote has a fantastic position in its domestic market that has enabled these new projects to be funded.

By contrast PPC is battling a stale construction market in South Africa. South African cement sales fell by 3.8% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2012. To counteract this, PPC has committed to expand outside of South Africa to the tune of 40% of total production by the start of 2016. It announced in early 2013 that production is on track to come online in Rwanda, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo by the fourth quarter of 2015. Zimbabwe is expected to follow suit by the middle of 2016. It already has interests in Botswana and Mozambique.

With two of its largest home-grown cement producers both expanding rapidly outside of their domestic markets, and a relative lack of interest from the big four multinationals, the sub-Saharan cement market is set for big changes in the medium to long term. PPC and Dangote are expanding towards each other and already share many markets. Dangote has expanded more rapidly and is moving towards exports from Nigeria. PPC is catching up by taking shares in strategically-placed plants. Is sub-Sahara headed for a showdown...? Whatever happens, the future of this rapidly-growing market will certainly be interesting.

South Africa: PPC (formerly Pretoria Portland Cement) launched a news and cement services 'online service desk' on 11 June 2013. The digital service follows hot on the heels of a mobile cement calculator app that can help calculate the amount of cement required for a specific job and offers real-time advice on how and when to lay concrete, based on local weather conditions.

PPC's said that it felt 'an obligation' to provide its customers (and those of the South African cement industry in general) with the information after it pulled its financial support from the Cement and Concrete Institute in April 2013. The CCI has since been dissolved. PPC had accused the CCI of being outdated and no longer able to supply the services that it, as a producer, required from an association. PPC's exit was quickly followed by AfriSam and Lafarge.

Aside from its digital services, PPC will also provide financial and technical support to universities to help develop SA's building materials and civil engineering industries. It will also expand its cement and concrete testing services, as the institute closed its testing laboratory years ago.

The CCI has since been re-established as the not-for-profit organisation the Concrete Institute (CI). It is headed by former CCI managing director Bryan Perrie, who stated that the CI is no longer representative of the whole South African industry. It is strongly linked to Sephaku Cement, which itself is majority-owned by Nigeria's dominant producer Dangote Cement.

Tanzania: Dangote Cement has started construction of a US$500m cement plant in Mtwara, Tanzania. The 3Mt/yr plant is expected to be completed by March 2015. Company president Aliko Dangote said commencement of the Tanzania plant is part of the strategy of the group's strategy to increase its cement production capacity to at least 29Mt/yr by 2015.

"Our investment in this sector, which is outside the traditional mining sector, is to take advantage of the abundance of limestone in the country and work towards making Tanzania self-sufficient in cement production. We must commend the government and people of Tanzania for recent public sector and banking reforms as well as revamped and new legislative frameworks, which have spurred private sector-driven investment," said Dangote.

Nigeria: Dangote Cement has reported a rise in net profit of 80.7% to US$340m in the first quarter of 2013 from US$188m in the same period in 2012. The Nigerian cement producer attributed the gain to an increased market demand of 15.7% (estimated 5.4Mt), improved gas supply and falling imports of cement into the Nigerian market.

Dangote's revenue rose by 39.5% to US$604m from US$433m. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose by 67.3% to US$398m from US$238m.

"Our 38% increase in volumes far outpaced the Nigerian market's strong growth of 16%," commented Devakumar Edwin, group managing director and chief executive of Dangote Cement. "Our gas supply has been better this year and that has driven margins upwards from the first quarter of 2012, when our new capacity at Ibese and Obajana was just coming on stream.

In its outlook Dangote reported that the strong demand had continued in April 2013. It noted that gas supply problems, which hindered its Obajan cement plant in particular, might continue in 2013. Cement exports are expected to make a modest contribution to 2013 sales.