Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, has announced the commencement of operations of his new granulated urea fertilizer plant located in Ibeju Lekki, Lagos, as of April 2021.
The announcement came on March 20 in Lagos while he led Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu on a tour of his petrochemical refinery facilities at the Lekki Free Trade Zone, The Cable reported.
The newly unveiled fertilizer plant is worth $2 billion. According to projections, it would have an annual production capacity of 3 million tons of urea and ammonia fertilizer, while generating $2.5 billion in yearly revenue.
The plant is different from the oil refinery that has become so closely associated with Dangote’s name and will have a production capacity of 650,000 barrels per day.
During the tour, Dangote mentioned that the oil refinery will be fully complete this year, while production will commence in the first quarter of 2022. Both facilities are located in the Lekki Free Trade Zone.
In November 2019, Dangote Group moved to invest in a $2-billion phosphate mining project in Togo in the hope to mine an estimated 2 billion tons of phosphorate in the French West African country. This would enable the company to process as much as 1 million tons of fertilizer per year at the Lagos fertilizer plant.
The parties mentioned at the time that, “Under the agreement, Togo will provide access to phosphate resources and the Dangote Group will provide access to ammonia and to the Nigerian market,” Mining Dot Com reported.
With the new plant, the Dangote Group will position itself as a leading supplier of fertilizer in West Africa, and provide Nigeria, Africa’s largest fertilizer economy, easy access to the product. Nigeria accounts for 50 percent of harvested land in West Africa.
Despite a recent drop in his net worth by a billion dollars, Dangote still challenges headwinds on the African market to meet project deadlines.
At the start of March, The Citizen announced that Dangote Group launched a compressed natural gas (CNG) pumping station within its cement factory premises in Tanzania to service at least 250 company trucks daily.
