Dangote hits 65% cement market share in Nigeria, ups Africa volume by 7.5%
Leading pan African cement manufacturer, Dangote Cement has grown Nigeria domestic cement market to 65 per cent and deepened other African plants’ volumes by 7.5 percent to 7.0 mta.
The company has in the past months boosted continental operations across Africa with the coming on stream of the 1.5 mta integrated cement plant in Mfila, Republic of Congo.
Dangote Cement recently appointed an acting chief executive officer for the Congolese plant.
Unaudited results for the nine months ended September 30, 2017; made available to Business Hilights indicated that the plant which began operations last month has almost doubled the size of the cement sector in the country. The Congo plant brings to 10 the number of Dangote Cement plants across Africa.
Further breakdown of the results indicated that the company recorded strong volumes in Senegal, Ethiopia and Cameroon.
Besides, within the period under review, the 1.5 mta clinker grinding facility in Douala, Cameroon sold approximately 938 kt of cement, indicating an increase of 16.4 percent on the 806 kt sold during the same period in 2016.
According to the group, factors that boosted sales range from strong brand recognition, increased point of sales branding, improvements in sales and marketing strategies to higher visibility through trade shows.
In Ethiopia, Dangote Cement increased sales by 16.8 percent to nearly 1.7 mta in the first nine months of 2017 representing capacity utilization of approximately 88 percent. The cement plant in Pout, Senegal sold 1.0 mta of cement in the period under review, up by 21.7 percent on the comparable period of 2016. This represents almost 89 percent capacity utilization at the factory.
In his review of the overall results, Chief Executive Officer of Dangote Cement, Onne van der Weijde, said, “Our Pan-African operations are performing strongly with excellent sales growth in Cameroon, Ethiopia and Senegal. We are consolidating our success across Africa and have just commissioned our 1.5Mta factory in Congo, the tenth country in which we have established operations.”
“In our key operations in Nigeria we have significantly improved our fuel mix and this has helped increase margins across the Group. It is especially good for Nigeria because most of the coal we are using is mined in our own country”.
Already, as part of new management arrangements expected to take effect from year end, the Board has announced changes in the leadership of the company with Mr. Onne Van der Weijde, stepping down as the company’s CEO at the end of 2017 having completed three years in this position.
He is stepping in as a Non-Executive Director of Dangote Cement Plc, with effect from 1st January 2018 and will operate from his country, The Netherlands.
The Board expressed appreciation to Mr. Onne for his contribution during his period as CEO in the last three years, in which he managed an important growth phase in the company’s development.
With this development, Engineer Joseph Makoju, Honorary Adviser to the Chairman and former MD of WAPCO/Lafarge, will be acting MD/CEO of Dangote Cement Plc.
It would be recalled that efforts of Dangote Cement championed Nigeria’s early success in cement backward integration during the last administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan.
Today, Nigeria is now exporting cement to neighbouring African countries.
