The Story of Charles Bouri

Charles Bouri may not be a household name, but cement is. And in many countries today, cement would still be in short supply if it wasn't for the innovation of Charles Bouri's family company, Seament.

Seament was first started in Nigeria by Charles Bouri's father, an American University-educated businessman of Greek and Lebanese descent. Seament was founded when, during the 1970s, Nigeria was ready to industrialize, but had great difficulty getting the necessary raw materials for all of the construction that industrialization requires. Plants, factories, and infrastructure all required an abundant supply of cement, but Nigeria was sorely lacking.

Seament began as a local concern and started supplying much-needed cement to local businesses for construction. Although successful, the scale was still very small because Nigeria's ports were not able to handle large cement imports. Industrial cement ships were too large to dock at a typical Nigerian port, leading to a continued shortage. Seament noticed this problem in a number of developing nations at the time, and knew that in order to bolster both the cement industry and the local economies they would need to find a way around the bottleneck of the ports.

There was no way to easily expand or upgrade the ports themselves, and doing so would require years of government work. So Charles Bouri's father, the founder of Seament, came up with a workaround. Seament conceived, designed, and built the very first floating cement port. This "port," essentially a modified barge, floated off the main port and was able to dock with major seagoing cement vessels. The cement was then shuttled to the normal port using local vessels. This ingenious workaround got Seament a great deal of respect from its competitors, who soon began copying the technique. But by leading the way, Seament was able to revolutionize not only Nigeria's developing economy, but those of eight other struggling nations, as well.

Charles Bouri went on to follow in his father's footsteps, playing an active role in Seament and becoming general manager of offshoot Seabulk. Seament continues to carry on the same spirit of innovation today, and serves countries around the world by delivering quality, high-grade cement at affordable costs. The company makes it a point to help spur development and growth wherever it works, while putting substantial resources into protecting the environment.

The work of Seament and Charles Bouri is one of the major steps in bringing cement, a crucial building material, to the developing world.