Cote d'Ivoire: Work starts on second CIMAF plant

Plans to bring Société Ciment d'Afrique's (CIMAF) production capacity in Côte d'Ivoire to 2Mta by 2017 were outlined in a meeting yesterday between Moroccan investors and the country's president. 

StarAfrica reports that Anas Sefrioui, president of CIMAF’s parent Addoha Group, used his meeting with Ivoirian President, Alassane Ouattara, to announce that work would begin this week on the construction of a new 1Mta grinding plant at the port of San Pedro in the west of the country. 

This comes on top of the expansion of CIMAF’s existing grinding plant in Cote d’Ivoire’s capital, Abidjan. The upgrade to this plant, which began last month, will raise capacity from 0.5Mta to 1Mta. Combined with the new San Pedro plant this will give CIMAF 2Mta of capacity in the country by late 2017. 

Mr Sefrioui stated that the cost of both projects amounted to XOF80bn (US$140m), adding that “all the plants we install are German third-generation plants with highly-sophisticated equipment”.

Cement production in Cote d’Ivoire is undergoing a phase of rapid expansion that will see capacity more than double over the next few years. New entrants to the market include Dangote, WACEM, the Kanis Group and Limak.