Mark Bouri and EBM

The Bouri family is probably best known for founding Seament, the first company to utilize floating terminals to distribute bulk building materials, but this is far from the only project they have their hands on. Charles Bouri, for example, also manages Seabulk, and Alexander Bouri is on the board of directors for Envipco. The list goes on for all members of the immediately family, but EBM, or Environmental Building Materials, spearheaded by Mark Bouri, is one of the truly interesting companies in the bloodline.

We live in a day and age where the harm we are doing to our Earth is becoming visible and it's starting to plague our consciences. While some choose to turn the other cheek, others are deciding to be proactive, and that is exactly the purpose of EBM. EBM is a leading provider of bulk materials, but is also an innovator for conservation and waste elimination. They make it their mission to repurpose wasteful by-products into completely usable materials for construction companies. As a result, members of the construction industry are able to improve the quality of their jobs while also saving money. New markets are created in return, and what would once be a negative cost is now a positive return for these companies. It creates a win-win situation.

The company is able to succeed as the result of intensive research and market analysis. They perform testing and quality control on their products, projects, and development to ensure that each company that uses their products gets the desired results. As a result, the earth benefits due to the reduction of waste and the decreased depletion rate of precious resources.

It would be ideal for all businesses to begin employing environmentally conscious strategies in an attempt to control and reduce the potential damage to the environment. That may be far-off into the future; however, businesses like EBM and Envipco are most certainly a good start.

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.