Re-bagging, highlighting health and safety, and power production in Nigeria

Health and safety

Nigeria’s UNICEM has declared June its inaugural Health and Safety month, having for the last two years held Health and Safety weeks to promote a culture of safety within the company. Olivier Lenoir, Managing Director of UNICEM, told press: “Our aim is to consolidate on the gains we have made so far on Health and Safety by promoting more of ownership, responsibility and accountability among our employees, contractors and transporters by achieving our overall objectives through synergy”.

Lenoir also added that there has been inaccurate information in the media about the presence on the market of sub-standard cement. He said the company produces cement according to customer demand and about 90% of the company’s production is 42.5 Portland cement. He said demand for 52.5 grade cement was comparatively low, but that the company has the ability to produce any type of cement.

Electricity production

The Dangote Group of Companies reportedly generates 262 MW of electricity to address power shortages in the country, according to the Deputy Group Managing Director of Dangote Sugar Refinery Plc, Mr Absullahi Sule. Mr Sule was speaking at an AGM organised by the Nigerian Gas Association when he said that the Obajana cement plant generates 135 MW and the Ibese cement plant generates a further 111 MW, while Dangote Sugar generates 16 MW. Mr Sule took the opportunity to call on the government to encourage the use of gas, of which the current yearly production is some 2 billion ft3. Some 40% of this is flared. He said it could compete effectively with other refined petroleum products and that the private sector should explore the opportunities in the gas and gas-to-power sectors.

Re-bagging

Dangote Cement has also hit out at perpetrators of re-bagging, a process by which the original contents of a bag are emptied and re-filled with a different product. In the cement industry, this is a big problem because the cement is replaced with a substandard cement/sand mix that does not perform as effectively and could be contributing to the incidents of building collapse. What is more, customers do not know that the cement has been tampered with and so believe that the original manufacturer has sold a substandard product.

Mr DVG Edwin, Group Managing Director of Dangote Cement, told Real Sector Watch: “There are different forms of what these people are doing. We have an extensive team, spearheaded by a former commissioner of police, who is in our employment, exclusively on this.”

Edited from various sources by Katherine Guenioui

Read the article online at: https://www.worldcement.com/africa-middle-east/16062014/nigerian_cement_companies_deal_with_health_safety_power_quality_353/