Tanga Cement and TANESCO sign power supply agreement

Tanga Cement Company and Tanzania Electric Supply Company (TANESCO) have signed a power supply agreement that ensures the cement producer receives 40MVA through a substation in Pongwe, Tanga.

Deklan Mhaiki, TANESCO deputy managing director (Investments) said the new agreement would help Tanga improve Tanga Cement’s output: "Tanga Cement is one of our long and high level customers and taking that into consideration, we have agreed to supply power to their second substation in Pongwe to improve their production capacity," he said.

Speaking of how the agreement would lessen power shortages, Reinhardt Swart, Tanga managing director, said: "We are aware that all cement plants uses a lot of power from TANESCO so we have decided to construct our own substation to get direct power from TANESCO to reduce unnecessary interruption during the production and operations process.”

The agreement comes as the Tanzanian producer is expanding the capacity of its operations, with construction of a second kiln line at its plant in Tanga. Mr Swart said that the agreement also provides guidelines on communicating power outages between two parties to minimise production disruptions at the cement plant.