Kenya cement merger on the cards
The Kenya government has received a proposal for the merger of the two largest cement producers in Kenya, Bamburi Cement Ltd and East Africa Portland Cement Ltd, marking the beginning of what could be the most comprehensive restructuring of the cement industry in Kenya in years, with ramifications likely to be felt throughout East Africa.
If the proposal for the merger — which, incidentally, is supported by East Africa Portland Cement — is approved, French cement conglomerate Lafarge, the most influential player in the region with plants in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, will have a chance to consolidate its interest in the region.
The new development points to a thawing of relations between Lafarge and the government, which until fairly recently was still pressing the French conglomerate to relinquish part of its stake in East Africa Portland, arguing that its involvement in the shareholding of the three major producers in Kenya constituted a conflict of interest.
Lafarge has a 41 per cent stake in East Africa Portland and a 17 per cent stake in Athi River Mining Ltd even as it retains a controlling stake in Bamburi — allowing it to enjoy a strategically dominant position in the cement industry in Kenya with representation in the boards of all three cement manufacturers.
In Uganda, the French company has a controlling stake in Hima Cement Ltd, while in Tanzania, one of the major cement producers, Mbeya Cement Ltd, is a subsidiary.
The merger is being supported on the grounds that the two big producers have to merge to create one strong East African champion capable of fending off competition from cement exporters from Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East and Egypt.
East Africa currently remains a high-cost cement producer, partly due to high electricity prices, exorbitant freight costs, high fuel costs and inefficient railway systems, but mainly because the market has for many years been sheltered from competition by high trade barriers.
Although cement companies have over the years been making profits, the industry has been protected by both a 25 per cent import duty plus a 30 per cent suspended duty.
The merger proposal is based on the grounds that this level of protection is unlikely to be sustained in the near future. Under the Customs Union of the East African Community, these duties must be reduced to zero by the year 2010.
Indeed, cement manuf-acturing in the region operate with high fixed costs that are linked to the relatively small sizes of cement plants in the region, thus compounding the problem of high production costs.
The consequence has been ever increasing consumer prices of cement in the region, the impact of which has been that per capita cement consumption in East Africa is one of the lowest in Africa.
According to industry estimates, Kenya’s annual per capita consumption stands at 54 kilogrammes; in Tanzania, it is 37kg in Uganda 32kg. South Africa’s per capita cement consumption is estimated at 200kg.
Clearly, the regional cement market is ripe for consolidation. What is surprising is that even in the face of these grim statistics, recent developments show that the cement industry in East Africa is progressively moving away from consolidating.
Instead of consolidating, nearly all individual cement producers in East Africa are acting as if oblivious to the increasingly hostile international environment they have to operate in.
Each of the major players is currently involved in a race to increase its own market share, spending millions of dollars in costly capacity expansion programmes.
In Kenya, medium producer Athi River Mining Ltd has only recently commissioned an additional kiln in Mombasa. In Uganda, Bamburi is progressing with doubling of the capacity of its Hima plant, while Tororo Cement is moving into the Kenya market with plans to erect a clinker plant in Mombasa and a grinding station in Nairobi.
In Kenya, East Africa Portland is spending millions of dollars to enhance its cement production output, while Bamburi is planning a multimillion dollar greenfield plant.
Yet it is clear that even after the completion of the new plants and facilities, the capacities of cement producers in East Africa will still remain small and comparatively inefficient compared with the big exporting facilities of Southeast Asia.
Published under Cement News
