By Franklin Alli and Moses Nosike
DANGOTE Group has positioned its subsidiary firm Dangote Bail Limited, as the hub for exporting its brand of bagged cement to sub Saharan-Africa.

The facility is located at the Federal Ocean Terminal Onne in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.According to the General Manager Operations, Mr. Abdullahi Bada, the Group’s reasons for expanding investment in the nation’s cement industry(Obajana cement, Kogi, BCC Gboko, including Lagos , Port Harcourt and the soon to take off Ibese plant in Ogun State ) was to ensure self- sufficiency in local demands, while aiming for the export markets.

“As local capacity increases in terms of production, what we are looking at here, at Dangote Bail Limited, is to become an export hub,” Bada said.

Buttressing, Acting Production Manager, Timothy Age, said that the company has invested in latest- of -the art technology that will enable them to meet both  local demand and for export targets.
He disclosed that both the Port Harcourt and Onne plant have an installed capacity of six million metric tons, but due to market regulation “ currently the facility delivers 11,000 metric tons 24/7 , and about 1.4 million metric tons yearly”.

According to  the Manager, Community & Public Affairs, Oluka Ngofa, “as a responsible corporate citizen, we try as  much as possible to abide by the regulations as regards government and community relationship. Outside of   those  rules, as an organisation, we also go ahead to engage our communities  in  such a way that we see them as stakeholders. We are not just out to pacify them but we make them part of our business so that they have stakes in what we are doing. That is the main secret  why we  have been  having  peaceful operations despite other challenges”.

The Group, he said, has long  recognised that when you make the host communities as stakeholders in your business, they know that if anything goes wrong with the business, it’ll affect them economically.

On how many people are on the company’s pay check, he declared; “Our staff are 100 per cent Nigerians. We have 600 people on our payroll, and we don’t keep casuals in our employment. All are full-time workers.

“We engaged  majority of  our workforce from the host community and within the state. They are usually given priority consideration, and also, in terms of infrastructure development, we  have two projects which we have done in  this community.

We have built a youth development centre, and we have also put a scholarship scheme in place because we knew providing the infrastructure without the Human Capital Development, does not amount to anything.
“In this regard, since 2003  till-date, we have  been running a scholarship   programme for students in  both polytechnic and  university which we run on yearly basis.”