TUE 22 MARCH, 2022-theGBJournal| The Dangote Fertiliser plant, Africa’s largest granulated urea fertiliser complex, has today been commissioned for operations by President Muhammadu Buhari.
The plant puts Nigeria squarely in position to become the Africa’s hotspot for urea fertiliser market, and has the potential to put the country’s food security challenges to bed as well.
It also rekindled confidence on the country’s agriculture sector with President Muhammadu Buhari urging many Nigerians who hitherto practiced subsistence farming because of inability of necessary inputs to take up agriculture as a business, during his commissioning speech today.
Nigeria, like many other African countries faces severe food insecurity, which is attributed majorly to inadequate food production due to lack of access to modernization and limited use of fertiliser.
“Our target is to give farmers the power to produce more, as more fertilisers will be made available to them, even as we also become self sufficient in fertilizer production,” Aliko Dangote, Chief executive of the Dangote group while speaking at the official commissioning of the plant.
Occupying 500 hectares of land in the Lekki Free Trade Zone, Lagos Nigeria, the Dangote fertiliser plant was built at a cost of $2.5 billion. It is envisaged that the plant will help Nigeria to retain about $125 million in import substitution and provide $625 million from exports of products from the fertiliser plant.
The plant is established to produce 3 million metric tonnes per annum of urea fertiliser in the first phase.
The complex consists:
2 x 2,200 MTPD Ammonia Plants based on Halder Topsoe technology.
2 x 4,000 MTPD Melt Urea Plants based on Snamprogetti technology.
2 x 4,000 MTPD Urea Granulation Plants based on Uhde technology.
A Captive Power plant comprising of 3 Steam turbine Generators of 40 MW capacity each totaling 120 MW.
3 Auxiliary boilers for 40 ATA steam generation of 200 TE capacity each.
Africa’s fertilizer market is projected to grow CAGR of 5.5% during forecast period (2022-2027) and it is expected that the Dangote plant will be a major growth driver.
Up until now, Africa’s fertiliser market has been dominated by international players from other continents who have primarily expanded their dominance with construction of new fertiliser manufacturing plants across the continent- including players like Isreal Chemicals Limited, Omnia Holdings Limited Haifa Group and Groupe OCP and Yara which in 2017 signed a multi-million contract to develop the Yara Dallol potash mine.
Twitter-@theGBJournal|Facebook-The Government and Business Journal|email: gbj@govbusinessjournal.ng|govandbusinessj@gmail.com
