Nigeria's Dangote Cement slashes product price to increase market share

Dangote Cement, Nigeria’s largest cement producer on Thursday announced an update on strategy, which included price reduction on its premium product in a move to stimulate rapid development of infrastructures in Africa’s biggest economy.
In a statement, Dangote Cement said it has reduced the price of its market-leading 3X brand of cement in Nigeria by ₦300 per 50kg bag, or ₦6,000 per tonne.

Aliko Dangote

The new price will become effective immediately; the company said noting that it is also
undertaking a number of marketing initiatives designed to stimulate consumption of cement in Nigeria and to increase exports.
“Our cost-saving initiatives in Nigeria have enabled us to cut the price of cement to a level that is good for consumers yet still allows us to achieve strong returns that are sustainable in the longer term” Onne van der Weijde Dangote Cement chief executive, said.
The company said it hope that reducing the cost of cement will help to stimulate building work across Nigeria at a time when the economy is in need of a boost.
According to him, “we are particularly keen to encourage the use of cement to build concrete roads because this reduction will make them competitive in cost to other less robust methods that will prove more expensive in the longer term.”
“Furthermore, we believe our cost-saving initiatives and new pricing strategy will help to support the naira by reducing unnecessary imports and by enabling us to generate valuable foreign exchange earnings through the export of Nigerian cement to neighbouring countries,” he noted.
Last week we received a shipment of 2,000 new trucks, which, after clearance from the port will be ready to begin exporting substantial quantities to neighbouring countries that lack the limestone resources necessary to make this most basic but economically important material.
Dangote Cement last week signed contracts worth $4.34 billion with China's Sinoma International Engineering Co. to build cement plants across Africa, as Nigeria's largest listed firm expands.
The company, majority-owned by Africa's richest man Aliko Dangote, has developed operations outside its dominant Nigerian home market in the last few years.
The plants to be built in Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Zambia, with another in Nepal, would add around 25 million tonnes to the company's existing capacity of around 45 million tonnes, said Dangote.