Pretoria Portland Cement (PPC) will pursue four new opportunities in African countries in an attempt to increase its revenue generation beyond South Africa
This follows the cement and lime producer investing US$12mn cash in July to obtain a 27 per cent stake in the Habesha Cement Share Company in Ethiopia.
PPC chief executive Paul Stuiver said that all of these opportunities were at different stages of development and was certain one of them “will be done and dusted one way or the other” within the next three months.
Stuiver added that none of these opportunities, which were a mixture of greenfields and brownfields projects, was more than a year away.
He declined to identify the countries involved other than confirming PPC was, on record, having an interest in the Democratic Republic of Congo and there were opportunities in Mozambique and in Zimbabwe, where it already has cement operations.
Stuiver further said, “The way these things work out, we’ll seldom get 100 per cent of these opportunities. If they all came to fruition, it would add three million tonnes to PPC cement capacity. I’ll be pleased if we get two out of four opportunities and delighted if we get three out of four.
“We welcome local partners and wouldn’t want to go above 70 per cent ownership on any of these initiatives, which also helps with the funding. Our target is to own between 51 per cent and 70 per cent of projects.”
Stuiver added that PPC would “very soon” embark on the second phase development of the Habesha Cement Share Company in Ethiopia to double the capacity of the plant to 2.8mn tonnes a year.
