Nigeria Eyes Floating Cement Terminals To Aid Building Boom

The current state of Nigerian real estate will come as no shock to people who have followed the country's history. The city of Lagos and other parts of the country are experiencing unprecedented population surges due to average family growth wildly outstripping economic expansion. According to the United Nations' population control report, released last year, the surges that pushed our world population to over 7 billion last year were largely concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa. Nowhere is this more evident than in Nigeria, where recent estimates show that the population has nearly doubled in the last 15 years.

 

As a commercial hub with business opportunities and a burgeoning middle class, investors are ready to build to help accommodate this growing population. But without an infrastructure that can support the creation and movement of resources, investment and building have come slowly. Perhaps the most evident is the lack of cement plants producing building product throughout the country. With builders interested in getting started right away, investors refuse to wait for plants to be built. Companies like BUA International have seen a business opportunity here. Chairman and CEO Abdulsamad Rabiu pounced in 2008, bringing Nigeria its first floating cement terminal.

 

The group, which has investment holdings across Africa and around the world, has not stopped at its amphibious cement efforts. One of the Group’s most recent acquisitions is the Cement Company of Northern Nigeria, (CCNN), where it invested $50 million as part of the expansion and upgrade of the company to boost its production output. But it all started with the floating cement terminal, an invention created by Albanian firm Seament Holdings

"Floating cement terminals allow us to break into foreign economies that would like to benefit from having nearby cement resources but don't have the infrastructure to get terminals built in a timely manner," Alexander Bouri, Chairman of Seament Holdings.

As the cement industry in Nigeria continues to thrive, investors will continue to build cement plants on land to aid in the reconstruction and expansion of this bustling commercial hub. But for nations around sub-Saharan Africa, floating cement terminal investment continues in places like Somalia and Tunisia.