Daily Independent Online.
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Tuesday, August 24, 2004.
MAN explains slump in local cement production
By Ntai Bagshaw
Development Reporter, Lagos
Despite the availability in Nigeria of limestone,
clay and gypsum, the principal raw materials for cement production, the chances
of cement price falling is unlikely, the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria
(MAN) has said. The manufacturers also fingered what they termed
“unfriendly industrial environment” as being responsible for the
slump in local production of the product.
“The local sourcing of these raw materials has
led to the misconception that cement ought to be cheap. This is not so because
of the unfriendly industrial environment, which makes cost of production very
high in Nigeria,” Chairman of MAN’s Non-Metallic Mineral Products
Sectoral Group, Dr. Ayoola Fasina, said. He spoke at a forum on non-metallic
products, jointly organised by MAN and the Raw Materials Research and
Development Council (RMRDC) in Lagos.
There are currently eight cement plants, operating in
the county and the product is sold at between N900 and N1,200 per bag. The
total installed capacity for the plants is about 6.2 million tonnes per year of
which 50 per cent is utilised. Fashina explained that despite the ban on
importation of the raw materials, the local varieties have remained more
costly. “Up till 1994, gypsum was imported for cement production at
between N2,000 and N4,000 per tonne for 90 per cent purity. But since the ban
on its importation, it is now bought at N12,000 per tonne for 70 per cent
purity,” he said. As a result of the erratic power supply from the
National Electric Power Authority (NEPA), every cement plant maintains heavy
generators on standby for essential services,” he said.
MAN listed major problems associated with the
decrease in local cement production to include shortfall in supply of fuel oil,
as means of energy (only WAPCO has converted its energy source to gas),
inadequate supply of bags used for packaging and poor quality of local supplies
of gypsum (more mud than gypsum) despite high cost. Others are high cost of
funds to replace obsolete machinery and high cost of building new plants (a new
plant costs $200 million).
Speaking on the state of the nation’s non-metallic
products industry, comprising cement, fibre cement products, school chalk,
glass and ceramics, MAN said the sub-sector is bedeviled by high cost of local
mining and only privately owned plants have been able to succeed.
Also speaking at the forum, RMRDC’s
Director-General, Dr. Abubakar Abdullahi, disclosed that there are about 35
minerals and rocks that are of fundamental importance to the industry and are
available in commercial quantity in the country.
“Among these are clay, diatomite, limestone, glass
sand, phosphate and barite. Others are coal, feldspar, talc and marble. Some of
these non-metallic minerals are being exploited on a large scale, while others
are mined on a small scale,” Abdullahi said.
