Clinker grinding at Guinea’s largest plant: Philippe Zacca, Guinea Industries Ciments / Bulk Group (Lebanon)
Filmed at Cemtech MEA 2015, 8-11 February, Grand Hyatt Dubai, UAE
Good morning. So I'm here to present Guinea Industries Cement, which is the new grinding plant in Guinea, and talk about a little bit the Guinean cement market, which is not well known to everybody. See its not working. Okay, so the GIC factory, Guinea Industries Cement, was completed and commissioned during February 2013.
It is the largest Clinker grinding plant in Guinea with a nominal capacity of 850, 000 tons per year. It's joint venture of $35 million joint venture between [xx] group, Lebanon, and local Lebanese-Guinean companies specializing in steel supply. Some of you might know conservate [xx], it's [xx] group trading entity which specializes in the trading of cement clinker, coal, pet coke and other additives necessary for the production of cement.
This is a picture of the new grinding plant in Guinea. To introduce Guinea a little bit, Guinea is a country in West Africa which borders Guinea-Bissau and Senegal to the North of it, Mali is to the East, and Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Ivory Coast to the South. It's not a too big of a country. Now you've 245,000 square kilometers, about 12 million population growth, at 2.5%.
Urbanization is a mere 35%, so there's a lot of construction yet to do in the country. The economy is mostly based on export of minerals, particularly Bauxite which is, which Guinea is estimated to have 1/3 of the word's reserve. Guinea has also a significant reserve of Iron ore which has yet to be tapped into, there has been a lot of talk recently with Rio Tinto to start export of iron ore but not before 2018 - 2019.
Mining accounts for 70% of exports, the rest is including gold and diamonds. GDP is $5.5 million nominal, at purchasing power parity it's about 12.2 million. So it's quite low $505 per capita. GDP growth is at 3%, and the currency there is the Guinea franc. Guinea is not quite of the union of safafco.
So, looking at the cement market there, as you can see, like most of West Africa, the capacity has increased dramatically over the last two to three years. Going from about 400, 000 tones in 2000, prior 2012 to close to 2 million in 2014 and above 2 million in 2015. Unfortunately, consumption has not followed the same pattern.
Growth for the last couple of years has been at about 4 - 5%. As a result, import have decreased to almost nothing. The JIC factory is located in the industry area of Conakry, which is about 30 kilometers from the port. We've a large land of 150, 000 square meters and another 4,000 at the port for the discharge of imported clinker.
We've 200,000
cubic meter of close storage, good for about 125, 000 tons of clinker, 3,000 square meters of back cement warehouse, above 200 employees and a sales office near the city. So, our total capacity is 120 tons per hour, we've 250
