Dangote opens new cement plant in Congo
Leading manufacturers of cement, Dangote Cement will officially open its 1.5 million metric tonnes per annum capacity Cement Plant in Congo on Thursday, this week.
The Plant, which is the largest in Congo, rolled out its first bag of cement on August 7, 2017.
The commissioning of the Congo Plant will bring the total of Dangote Cement’s fully operational plants to 10 in 17 African countries.
The company’s third quarter unaudited results showed that the Congo plant, which recently began operations, has almost doubled the size of the cement sector in the country.
In the overall, Dangote Cement maintained its strong hold in the domestic cement market accounting for 65 percent of the Nigerian cement market while Pan-African volumes went up by 7.5 percent to 7.0 mta.
Analysis of the results indicated that the company recorded strong volumes in Senegal, Ethiopia and Cameroon. In the nine months under review, the 1.5 mta clinker grinding facility in Douala, Cameroon sold approximately 938 kt of cement, indicating an increase of 16.4 percent on the 806 kt sold the same period in 2016.
The company attributes the increase in sales to a number of factors ranging from strong brand recognition, increased point of sales branding, improvements in sales and marketing strategies to higher visibility through trade shows.
Dangote Cement Ethiopia increased sales by 16.8 percent to nearly 1.7 mta in the first nine months of 2017 representing capacity utilization of approximately 88 percent. The cement plant in Pout Senegal sold 1.0mta of cement in the period under review, up by 21.7 percent on the comparable period of 2016. This represents almost 89 percent capacity utilization at the factory.
The company said: “Our Pan-African operations are performing strongly with excellent sales growth in Cameroon, Ethiopia and Senegal. We are consolidating our success across Africa and have just commissioned our 1.5Mta factory in Congo, the tenth country in which we have established operations.
‘’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”.
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
Comment
No comments found.