NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec 9 – Savannah Clinker ltd has contracted Chinese-based company Sinoma International Engineering to construct a Sh36.9 billion ($300 million) clinker factory in Kitui County.
The 8, 000 tonnes per day clinker plant with a 2,400 cement frinding plant is equipped with a 25 megawatt (MM) captive per plate heat recovery system and associated infrastructure and amenities.
The project, which will take two and half to finish, will be located in Mwingi North and will will begin immediately.
“The plant will crush locally available limestone to clinker in addition to a 100-ton-per-hour cement grinding and product packaging and delivery system,” Savannah Clinker Ltd Chairman Benson Ndeta said.
“Within five years of initial clinker extraction, we will replace fossil fuel-based power requirements with a combination of solar power and thermal recirculation, becoming the first plant in the region to achieve this.” He added.
It will be the largest industrial investment in the entire former Eastern province region, buoying the region’s economic activity.
The project is set to employ 5,000 workers during construction phase and a further 10,000 upon completion.
Sinoma International is one of the largest Cement Factory Contractors in the world and, just this month, has also bagged a contract for the expansion of Dangote Cement in Nigeria for $500m and MOROC Cement in Ethiopia for $22m.
The country has an installed cement grinding capacity of 15 million, which needs to be matched with close to 10 million ton clinker capacity but has a deficit of 3.5 million currently imported from the Middle Eastern countries.
This is a backward integration project aimed at saving the country over $100m per annum in foreign exchange used to import clinker.
In addition, global clinker prices have more than doubled since the advent of the Covid pandemic making clinker imports for cement production largely unviable for producers without local production capacities.
The plant is designed to use appropriate carbon capture technology to completely remove or materially reduce the plant’s carbon footprint within ten years of commencement.
The carbon mitigation strategy is part of a ten-year US$50 – 100m environmental, social, and governance investment programme signed on to be run by Longevity Development, an Environmental, Sustainability, and Governance consultancy working on the project.
In addition to deploying green power and carbon capture solutions for the plant itself, Savannah’s social impact programme focus on developing sustainable food, water, and household power solutions for Kenyan rural and peri-urban communities, with an initial focus on Kitui and Machakos counties.