Zambezi Portland meets Ndola Stadium needs

Zambezi Portland meets Ndola Stadium needs
16 December 2009


Zambezi Portland Cement, the newest entrant into domestic cement sector, has managed to satisfy standards required in constructing the Ndola Stadium, beating Lafarge Cement Plc, the country’s giant cement manufacturing company.

And Zambezi Portland Cement is studying the possibility of supplying cement to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and other countries in the Great Lakes region.

Zambezi Portland has produced over 3000t of cement since commencing output a couple of months ago.

Company sales and marketing manager Isaac Ngoma said in an interview that Zambezi Portland Cement had already started supplying the commodity at a large scale to Ndola Stadium which is being constructed by the Chinese.

“Apart from supplying cement to the Ndola stadium, Zambezi Portland cement will also be supplying to several other big projects which include the mines,” Ngoma said.

“Some big complex building projects in Lusaka, big contractors like Hua-Giang Investments, a company that has been contracted to build houses for police officers countrywide, Covec Congo, a company that is working on several road projects in Lubumbashi and many other multi-million dollar projects.”

Recently, there was a row when the Chinese company contracted to construct Ndola Stadium opted to import cement for the project because it could not source the commodity locally as Lafarge allegedly failed to meet the required specifications.

Ngoma said Zambezi Portland was an ordinary Portland cement of CEM I 42.5N grading, adding that no extenders were used in its production process so as to improve its super quality and high strength.

“The product has an early strength development of two days to exceed 10 Mpa according to the EN 197 specifications. The Company will implement the ISO 9001 system which it will use as guideline to monitor and control quality,” he said.

Ngoma said Zambezi Portland Cement was prepared to influence the cement industry through the production of high quality cement and favourably competing with existing companies locally and internationally.

“Only few countries in Southern Africa among them South Africa can boast of a 42.5N Portland cement that Zambezi Portland produces,” he said. “Zambezi Portland will further influence the industry through its competitive pricing which it arrived at after undertaking a price survey of similar products in the region.”

And Zambezi Portland is considering exports of its products with specific focus on the Great Lakes Region.

Ngoma said his company would be exporting cement to countries such as the DRC, while Burundi and Rwanda had already
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