MANYARA CEMENT PLANT IN THE PIPELINE

A new cement production mill, Manyara Cement Company worth over 200bn/- with an annual capacity of 575,000 metric tonnes is expected to be built in Hanang District, Manyara Region.

The project Engineer, Mr Felix Laizer, said in an interview with the ‘Daily News’ in Dar es Salaam on Tuesday that the factory will be established in phases until it reaches full capacity of 2000 metric tonnes per year.

“We are still carrying project preparations and mobilisations for it to kick off soon. The project is registered at the Tanzania Investment Centre (TIC),” he said, adding that in the first phase of the project a total of 38 million US dollars will be spent.

At its full production capacity, the cement plant will create over 1,500 jobs and other indirect jobs. At this initial stage of the project investment, he said the cement factory capacity will be between 1,000 to 1,250 tonnes daily.

It is estimated that 43 trucks of 30 tonnes capacity will be loaded every day to ferry cement to the market. “Manyara Cement Company is now on search of equity partner into the project to inject funds required for plant purchase as well as putting in place necessary infrastructure,” he said.

Mr Laizer said there are three options of obtaining clinker which is an important raw material in the production of cement. They will look at the possibility of sourcing it in the domestic market, importing and installing own machine to produce clinker.

Similarly, he said the cement production mill is expected to use three sources of power namely coal, diesel and electricity from the national grid. However, the long term plans are to establish self-power plant in order to reduce the costs of energy.

Despite stiff competitions in the cement industry, Mr Laizer said the company has already invested heavily in research in respect to viability of cement business in the region including raw materials availability.

“The factory is located strategically and will be serving the close regions of Shinyanga, Mwanza, Dodoma, Singida, Tabora and Kigoma,” he added. The country’s production capacity reached 8.7 tonnes last year against consumption capacity of 4.1 tonnes creating overcapacity challenges among cement makers.

The situation has intensified competition among cement factories and forced retail prices down.

Daily News