$40m Buipe cement factory ready

Work will soon commence on a cement production plant at Buipe in the Northern Region, as equipment for the project are already on their way to the location.

The $40 million project follows painstaking and expensive feasibility studies into the economic viability and availability of high grade limestone in the Buipe area.

The equipment, which came through the Aflao border, after they landed in the Togolese capital, Lome, have been loaded on trucks and are cruising towards the location, which has been prepared for the project.

A Director of Savanna Cement Company Limited, Steven Kodjo Kayi, while speaking to CITY & BUSINESS GUIDE about the project, said accommodation and other facilities are being provided at the location.

The Buipe area, he said, is endowed with high grade limestone which would provide raw material to feed the manufacturing plant.

The cement project, the director noted, would provide the Bui Dam work with the much needed cement.

He observed that the employment the project is going to provide for the local people “can only be imagined”.

Continuing, he said, “When we thought out about the project, we did not know that the Bui Dam dream would be actualized. But today this has been the case.”

He said it is the wish of the company that their efforts would change the fortunes of not only the people in that part of the country but the whole country.

CITY & BUSINESS GUIDE gathers that exploratory work on the viability of the Buipe limestone project started in 1996 by the Savannah Cement Company, which was floated by Amalgamated Investments Limited.

Economic forecasters consider the Buipe project as one of the wonderful things to happen in the country's economy aside the recent oil find offshore in the Western Region.

Being a private sector initiative, the venture would not go the way of government initiated projects, considering for instance the capital outlay involved.

An excited Yakubu Zakariah, the District Chief Executive of Gonja Central told CITY & BUSINESS GUIDE that he and his people are ready for the project.

He confirmed the movement of equipment to Bole for the commencement of the project and added that accommodation on the site is already in place.

“We're pretty ready for the project. Housing is set on the site.

“The employment and economic benefits of the project in my area is unimaginable. A lot of us are involved in making it viable,” he explained.

The search for limestone deposits, the raw material base for clinker/cement production, dates as far back as 1931 when the then Director of the Gold Coast Geological Survey Department, Sir Albert Ernest Kitson commenced geological investigations into limestone and dolomite deposits in February 1916.

Ever since the discovery of the Buipe limestone deposit, five separate follow-ups have been made by the Ghana Geological Survey Department to assess the quality, quantity and chemical composition of the deposit and the possibility of using it for the manufacture of clinker/cement.

A J.S. Addo Consultancy positive report about the deposits gave rise to a project promotion. This was how Amalgamated Investments Limited based in Accra formed Savanna Cement Company to facilitate this in 1996.

The gradual commencement of operations on the location is the culmination of a long period of exploration, feasibility studies and investment.