Lafarge inaugurates a new cement plant at Bazian, Iraq

Lafarge inaugurates a new cement plant at Bazian, Iraq
09 April 2009


On 8th April 2009, Mr Bruno Lafont, chairman and chief executive officer of Lafarge, inaugurated a new plant at Bazian, in Iraqi Kurdistan.

 This new plant is situated 30km away from Sulaimaniyah, which is the second biggest city of the region. It has been in operation since mid-2008 and has an annual production capacity of 2.5Mt of cement It is equipped with the latest technology and meets the Group’s environmental standards as applied by Lafarge across all its operations. It is partly powered by a "captive" electricity station built by Lafarge next to the plant.
 
Lafarge now holds two cement plants in Iraq as principal shareholder, which result from the acquisition of Orascom Cement in January 2008. With these two latest plants, Lafarge is pursuing its internal growth strategy in Cement and progressing with the implementation of its capacity expansion program, undertaken for the 2006-2012 period and revised in 2008 in order to adapt to the current economic reality. Thus, during this period, 48Mt of new cement capacity will have been built, principally in developing countries, which are seeing very high levels of demand.

As such, the Bazian and Tasluja plants (about 30km away from one another) will enable Lafarge to respond to the strong demand for building materials in the Iraqi market, in a country going through the process of reconstruction where the requirement for cement is increasing by 15% per year.

Published under Cement News