Angola | Difficulty obtaining currency affects cement production

The difficulty of obtaining foreign currencies to import raw material means the Secil Lobito cement company’s production and sales should this year drop 25 percent to 150,000 tons, company managing director Augusto Miragaia said.
Miragaia told the Angolan newspaper O País that the company did not have enough exchange resources to import clinker, a raw material used in cement production, or to acquire other materials and hire skilled labor.
Other challenges include tripled fuel costs and the doubled price of electric power, factors which affect production costs, he said.
During the last three months the factory has been operating with clinker purchased from the Cuanza Sul Cement Factory, which stopped supplying it in late June.
Angola currently has five cement plants and an installed capacity of about 8 million tons per year, which in 2015 exceeded demand by 2.7 million tons.
The Lobito cement plant is controlled by Secil-­Angola – Investimentos e Participações, with a 51 percent stake; the remaining 49 percent pertain to Angola’s state-held Empresa Nacional de Cimentos. MDT/Macauhub