Nigerian Dangote buys into South Africa cement firm
Nigeria’s leading industrial conglomerate, Dangote Group, has acquired a 45 per cent stake in South Africa’s Sephaku Cement for ZAR3bn ($378m) through a private placement, the two parties said on Thursday.
The cash from the strategic partnership will help finance the building of a 2.2Mta cement plant in South Africa that is expected to start production by mid 2010, they said in a statement.
The partnership will provide Sephaku Cement with the necessary funding and technical expertise to expedite the construction of their new cement plant without affecting their status as a black-owned and controlled cement company," the statement quoted Lelau Mohuba, the firm’s chairman as saying.
Sephaku Cement is a subsidiary of Sephaku Holdings Ltd, a South African minerals exploration, development and investment company. The cement firm plans to list on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in September after road shows to raise 1.2 billion rand.
Dangote signed contracts worth $1.2 billion in February with China’s Sinoma International to built cement plants in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Senegal and Zambia.
Sinoma and Dangote also signed another contract in February worth $1.6 billion to build six cement production lines in Nigeria, the Chinese firm said in a statement on its Web site.
Dangote commissioned two cement plants last May in central Nigeria with a combined capacity of 8Mta, after it first bought control of the Benue Cement Company .
Published under Cement News
