Cement manufacturing giant, Lafarge Africa and Standard Organisation of Nigeria have lamented the loss of production man-hours in the nation’s industrial sector due to the non-availability of gas and scarcity of foreign exchange.
Managers of Lafarge Africa’s Ewekoro Cement Plants I and II, Segun Shoyoye and Hannes Diedericks, respectively, spoke when the SON Acting Director-General, Paul Angya, led other officials of the organisation on an inspection tour of the company.
The Ewekoro Cement Plant Manager I, Shoyoye, stated that the situation had been putting unnecessary pressure on the cement manufacturers in the last six months, forcing a temporary shut down of the Sagamu Cement Plant for six weeks and causing below-capacity operations in the Ewekoro plants.
Shoyoye, who jointly spoke with Diedericks, declared that the twin problems of non-availability of gas and foreign exchange shortage were impeding full capacity production in the manufacturing industries.
The cement plants’ managers identified lack of gas supply and foreign exchange as the major challenges confronting the multinational cement company, appealing to government to urgently come to the aid of the investors in the manufacturing industries to ensure they remained in business.
He said, “We can say we have some challenges, but the major issue is lack of gas supply because of oil and gas pipelines in the Niger Delta. Today, because of what we have talked about, we are using a mixture of gas and black oil for our operations which is highly costly, and also downrates our production from 100% to 75% in Ewekoro plants. This has been on since February.
“During the month of May, we had to stop production in Sagamu plant for 6 weeks. Before then, we had been producing 3,000 tons per day, but now, we are doing about 1,000 per day because of the fuel issue. But I want to say that we will soon get over it because of our investment in alternative source of energy in our plants.”
Corroborating the positions of Lafarge Africa on non-availability of gas and foreign exchange, the SON boss noted that the challenges faced by investors had been responsible for the high cost of production and high prices of Nigerian products, making them non-competitive.
Angya noted that despite the high cost of production, which induced challenges earlier identified by investors, manufacturers in Nigeria still maintained good international standards in their operations and production.
He expressed delight that goods processed and produced in the country could still compete favourably with those manufactured abroad.
Angya said, “Clearly, that is a major national challenge, the activities of the militants in the Niger Delta has affected supply of gas nationwide. It has, of course, hampered the capacity of industries to produce.
“Also, with the downturn in the economy, reduction in the inflow of forex because of oil prices, Nigeria has also faced challenge of amount of foreign exchange available to industries. These are problems government is tackling frontally, government is over-driven to reverse these negative trend.
“Last week, we were in Lagos with captains of industries and entire industry stakeholders, looking at the challenges, and ways of ameliorating the situation, and the situation is not an exemption. Government is engaging the militants, trying to find solutions and I think within the shortest possible time, the challenges will be a thing of the past.”
Speaking on quality assurance and control in the manufacturing industries in the country, the SON acting director-general said, “I can tell you that the local manufacturers are over 70% compliant to standard requirements. Although we have issue with competition, perhaps they are not able to compete in terms of price because of cost of production, in terms of quality products, I score local manufacturers over 70%.”
