Yemen’s Amran cement factory produced 604,085t last year at a total cost of YR10 bn last year, the Director General of the factory Noman Dowaid said, Saba news reported. Dowaid said that since its establishment in 1982 up until last year the factory had produced about 12Mt of cement, at a total cost of around YR 80 billion.
The director added that construction work on the new factory was expected to finish soon, and that when opened would increase annual production rates of the factory from 600,000t to more than 1Mta. It is hoped that the new factory, costing YR 30 billion to build, will increase production to 2Mta by 2010. The Ministry of Industry and Trade is adopting a plan to increase cement production by as much as four times the current levels, in cooperation with relevant authorities. According to the industry ministry, current cement production only covers 45 per cent of the local market needs.
The Military Economic Corporation is working with the Ministry of Industry and Trade to extend production lines of two other factories – the Bajal and Al-Barah plants - to raise annual production to 5Mta by 2007. Last year, the Arab-Yemeni Cement Company signed a contract in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to make initial designs for a new cement factory in the Mukalla area of the Governorate of Hadhramaut.
The US$200m projects will have a production capacity of around 1Mta. The contract was signed by the company president and a representative of the Indian Holtake Engineering Designs Company.
