TRUCKS

Dangote Group plans to establish a $100- million vehicle assembly plant project in Lagos, Nigeria.

Dangote Group is a Nigerian multinational industrial conglomerate.

The Lagos plant will, on completion, produce heavy-duty trucks to distribute Dangote’s products within Nigeria and across other African countries.

Truck production will happen in partnership with China National Heavy Duty Truck Group Company, or Sinotruk. The plant will be 60% owned by Dangote Group, trading under Dangote Industries, with Sinotruk holding the remaining 40% equity stake.

The West Africa plant will have the capacity to produce 10 000 trucks a year.

The operation is expected to employ an estimated 3 000 people once fully operational.

The assembly plant will be the eighth Sinotruck plant abroad.

Dangote Group operates one of the largest truck fleets in Africa, at more than 10 000 units, using the vehicles for the distribution of products such as cement, sugar, flour and pasta.

Dangote Group chief corporate communications officer Anthony Chiejina says the truck plant will “save a huge amount of forex, spent on the importation of the heavy-duty vehicles”.

There are also possibilities for the plant to expand in future, he adds, even though he does not specify what this expansion would entail.

Dangote Group imported 12 000 trucks from China in 2014.

The same year saw Sinotruk secure orders for 176 000 vehicles, up by 9.94% on the previous year, of which 34 000 units were sold outside China. Around 15 000 units of this number were sold in Africa.

Sinotruk’s headquarters and main manufacturing facility are in Jinan, the capital of Shandong province. The company was founded in 1956, with the first truck rolling off the assembly line in 1960.