West Africa: Dangote Cement to meet demand

With the rising concern of unavailability of cement during certain times of the year in Ghana and the rapid infrastructure development of many economies in Africa, especially the sub region, Dangote has positioned itself to meet the supply needs of estate and private home developers.

“We are expanding the capacity of the Ibese plant, which already has two mills which produce a total of 6Mta, with two more units of mills and storage capacity for clinker to produce 12Mta. This will be big enough to supply the entire West African sub region,” the vice chairman of the Dangote Group, who is also in charge of the Ghanaian market, Alhaji Tajudeen Adesina Sijuade revealed.

He was speaking to a group of journalists during a facility tour of the company’s modern plant and mentioned that, for the mean time products from the Ibese factory, which could produce 6Mta of cement, would also feed the Ghanaian market.

The company supplies high strength cement (42.5R), as against a relatively lower strength (32.5N) cement that is usually available on many markets including the Ghanaian market.

The company has spent the past three years looking for limestone deposits in commercial quantities which are vested in the state so it can start the production of clinker locally in addition to the bagging of cement which it does on a smaller scale from its plant in Tema.

Locally produced clinker will save Ghana a lot of foreign exchange. For example, if Ghana consumes about 3Mta of imported clinker for cement production, given that the landed cost in Ghana is US$90/t,  the Bank of Ghana would spend US$270m a year to support this importation.