Takamol plant begins production

ASEC Cement, which will control more than 12 million tpa of cement production capacity by 2013 in five countries spanning from Algeria to Iraq-Kurdistan, announced today that it has begun production at Takamol, its greenfield cement plant on the left bank of the River Nile some 320 km north of the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. The total investment cost for Al-Takamol Cement stands at US$252.7 million.

“This was a very challenging plant,” said ASEC Cement Chairman and CEO Giorgio Bodo. “Takamol is in a remote area on the left bank of the Nile, and the location was dictated by its proximity to the limestone quarries that give the plant an important competitive advantage. Although we are accustomed to working in remote locations and to dealing with intense heat, the challenges at Takamol were compounded by the fact that the two banks of the Nile were only recently connected by a bridge. Until a few months ago, we had been working with pontoons.”

ASEC Cement is a Portfolio Company of ASEC Holding, Citadel Capital’s Platform Company for investments in the regional engineering and construction industry.

At Takamol, ASEC Cement built 15 km of roads to connect the plant to government roads, erected a water treatment station connected to the plant by a 15-km-long pipeline, and contracted to build its own 42 MW captive power plant, which now provides all of Takamol’s electricity needs.

“This tremendous effort gives us an important advantage over other factories now under construction in Sudan,” Bodo noted. The plant, built with leading-edge technology that meets or exceeds national environmental standards, has a nominal capacity of 1.45 million tpa of clinker and 1.6 million tpa of cement.

The Takamol plant will directly employ 450 staff and help create the same number of indirect jobs. In line with ASEC Cement policy, Takamol is already running a training program for Sudanese nationals and will prioritise the hiring of local staff. All ASEC Cement plants aim to replace Egyptian management and line personnel with highly trained local staff as operations come on-stream.

ASEC Cement’s Takamol plant will reduce by half Sudan’s annual cement deficit of 3 million tpa, allowing the country to save hard currency for other uses.

Subscribers can read more about this plant in the August issue of World Cement, available to download from next week.

Read the article online at: https://www.worldcement.com/africa-middle-east/20072010/takamol_plant_begins_production/