The Dangote Industries Limited, producers of Dangote Cement, has given its commitment to increasing its activities in Ghana, by scaling up the volume of its cement on the Ghanaian market.
Company officials said although its operations in the country had faced several challenges, it was poised to make a gigantic impact on the Ghanaian market and the economy.
The company has spent the past three years looking for limestone deposits in commercial quantities 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 three million tonnes of imported clinker a year for cement production, given that the landed cost per tonne in Ghana is US$90, the Bank of Ghana would spend US$270 million a year to support this importation. This has greater consequences on the country’s reserve and puts pressure on the exchange rate, lowering the value of the cedi, which has a lot of micro and macroeconomics consequences for the country.
The Vice Chairman of the Dangote Group, who is also in charge of the Ghanaian market, Alhaji Tajudeen Sijuade, told the GRAPHIC BUSINESS during a facility tour of the company’s modern plant that in the meantime, products from the Ibese factory, which produces six million metric tonnes of cement annually, would feed the Ghanaian market. The factory is also the second largest cement factory in Nigeria and West Africa, after Dangote’s Obajana plant.
