Dangote Group, in partnership with China’s heavy duty truck group, Sinotruck, will roll out the first set of vehicles from the Lagos-based assembly plant next week, a statement from the group disclosed this yesterday.
The Executive Director of Dangote Group, Edwin Devakumar, also disclosed that the $100 million plant would commence assembly of cars soon.
The plant, according to Devakumar “aims to meet an expected increased demand for transportation in the country as the government focuses on boosting agriculture and farmers need to move goods across the vast country.
“The Dangote Group has a fleet size of 12,000 trucks and being large users, one of the biggest challenges in the market today is logistics because we do not have a proper transport network.
“The joint venture, which is 65 per cent owned by Dangote and 35 per cent by Sinotruck, will assemble components and knocked down parts imported from Sinotruck to the Nigerian plant.”
He said the plant has the capacity to assemble 16 trucks a day and would export to West Africa, adding that the facility would expand into vehicle manufacturing.
In March last year, Dangote bidded for a majority stake in Peugeot Automobile Nigeria. The result of the exercise was yet been released.
Turning to Dangote’s other interests, Devakumar said the group was on track to launch its $17 billion oil refinery with the first crude for processing going into the plant in October, 2019.
“It will handle 650,000 barrels per day. The company will scale down operations in its flour milling, sugar refinery and tomato processing businesses however, due to dollar shortages to fund the import of raw materials.
“Where the foreign exchange is not available we are cutting down our operations. For example, we had a vegetable oil refinery we have shut down; we had a tomato based processing plant we have shut down,” he added.
Dangote’s cement business was continuing as its main raw material – limestone – could be sourced at home.
He added the firm commissioned a new cement plant in Sierra Leone last week and expected a plant in Congo to begin production this year.
