Dangote Cement Plc said it will officially open its 1.5 million metric tonnes per annum capacity Cement Plant in Congo.

The Congo plant will be opened on November 23, 2019.  Constructed at a conservative cost of $500 million, the Plant is expected to directly employ more than 1000 people as thousands of indirect jobs will also be created.

The Plant which is now the largest in Congo rolled out its first bag of cement on  August 7, 2017.

Currently in 17 African countries, the Congo Plant commissioning will bring the total of Dangote Cement fully operational Plants to 10 across Africa.

The company’s third quarter unaudited results showed that the Congo plant which recently began operations has almost doubled the size of the cement sector in the country.

In the overall, Dangote Cement maintained its strong hold in the domestic cement market accounting for 65 percent of the Nigerian cement market while Pan-African volumes went up 7.5 percent to 7.0 mta. Analysis of the results indicated that the company recorded strong volumes in Senegal, Ethiopia and Cameroon.

In the nine months 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 the same period in 2016.

Dangote Cement attributed the increase in sales to a number of factors ranging from strong brand recognition, increased point of sales branding, improvements in sales and marketing strategies to higher visibility through trade shows.

Dangote Cement Ethiopia increased sales 16.8 percent to nearly 1.7 mta in the first nine months of 2017 representing capacity utilisation of approximately 88 percent. The cement plant in Pout Senegal sold 1.0mta of cement in the period under review, up 21.7 percent on the comparable period of 2016.

This represents almost 89 percent capacity utilisation at the factory.

The company stated that “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.”

It would be recalled that top rating agencies, Moody’s Investors Service (Moody’) and Global Credit Ratings recently scored Dangote Cement high marks in their recent published ratings assigning a stable outlook to the foremost cement conglomerate.

Moody’s assigned a first-time Ba3 corporate family rating (CFR), Ba3-PD probability of default rating and Aaa.ng national scale rating (NSR) corporate family rating to Dangote Cement Plc (DCP), with the outlook on the ratings as stable while Global Credit Ratings accorded initial long term and short term national scale issuer ratings of AA+(NG) and A1+(NG) respectively, to Dangote Cement Plc, with the outlook accorded as Stable.

Speaking on the rating, vice president and lead analyst for Dangote Cement Plc at Moody’s Douglas Rowlings said, “Dangote Cement Plc’s Ba3 corporate family rating, one-notch above the Government of Nigeria’s rating, reflects the company’s strong standalone credit profile and track record of demonstrated financial support from a larger and more diversified parent, Dangote Industries Limited.”

He added that the ratings factor in the diversification of the company’s revenue streams as DCP’s new cement production plants are commissioned in Africa with Pan-African volumes expected to reach 40 percent of total sales volumes 2020.

Global Credit Ratings (GCR) credit ratings on Dangote Cement were based on the fact that DCP is one of Africa’s leading integrated cement companies.

Culled from: leadership