BY FRANKLIN ALLI

Lafarge Cement WAPCO Nigeria Plc has charged cement manufacturers in the country to diversify their products away from the normal Portland cement.

Joe Hudson, Managing Director, made the call during a ’ Meeting of Technical Committee on Cement’ hosted by the company in Lagos.

The Committee had been inactive for more than ten years. “The big issue is, now that we have availability of cement -what next? Cement par capital consumption in Nigeria is less than 100 kilos compared with Egypt’s 400 kilos. So there is need for product diversification in order to properly satisfy the market.

“This meeting is all about bringing the great minds in the industry together to really talk about standards and products diversification, quality consistency, etc

“As you know cement is used for construction of houses but we need to look at specific products for specific purposes. For example, Last year, we came up with a new product called Elephant Supersat which is tailored specifically for block makers,” he said.

Vipul Agrawal, Chairman of the Technical Committee on Cement, said: “This kind of meeting was happening in Nigeria 10-15 years ago and was sponsored by WAPCO and Benue Cement but along the line it stopped. We have revived it a year ago and we are now meeting regularly, engaging ourselves in development activities.

“As you have seen, when it comes to development there is no differences even though we are competitors in the market – Dangote, Lafarge, Unicem, etc. CMAN decided to set up the committee to work on products development and having the right quality standard. We cannot sell cement in the country without SON certification.”

Engr. Charles Ikechukwu Okoro, Director of Standard, Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), noted: “When we finish the meeting with the technical committee, we will come up with so many things that will be used to enlighten the public on cement usage. Our plan is to ensure that CMAN produces quality cement, and ensure that they are enough to saturate the economy; we also want to ensure that they diversify to other areas of cement usages.”

However, the Director General of SON, Dr. Joseph Odumodu, who spoke through Engr. John Achukwu, Director Testing Services, faulted the slow take-off of the Cement Technology Institute being proposed by the Federal Government and Cement Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, eight months after the Board of Trustee and the Project Implementation Team was inaugurated by the Minister of Trade and Investment, Dr. Olusegun Aganga.

He noted that countries like India and China have robust cement institutes.  I think that is where we should aim. What is the problem here; is it capital, land or enabling acts?  SON being the government agency is ready to support CMAN in any area that we can help in the establishment of the Institute.”

Meanwhile, Government has set aside the levy on cement import to build the institute which is to be the fulcrum for the positioning of Nigeria as a net exporter of cement.