The President of the Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, has reaffirmed the readiness of one of his companies, Dangote Sinotruk West Africa Ltd (DSWAL), to further raise the level of local content in its vehicles to up to 60 percent.
He stated that this would be possible when Ajaokuta Steel Company comes on stream.
Alhaji Dangote spoke on Sunday at the commissioning ceremony of DSWAL's completely knocked down (CKD) plant on Oba Akran Avenue in Ikeja, Lagos.
The commissioning was done by the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, Gov. Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos, the Deputy Senate President, Jibril Barau, Senators, among others.
Dangote said: "The investment in the truck assembly plant is part of our backward integration to add value and reduce imports. I am glad yesterday, Your Excellency, when you talked about Ajaokuta Steel in your speech, and I believe the completion of the Ajaokuta Steel project will give fillip to our attempt to increase local content in the assembly in our lines.
"We have welding and painting shops to fabricate and paint trucks and trailers of different types so as to enhance local content of CKD operations of commercial vehicles manufacturing in Nigeria.
"In the next 12 months, we will begin to fabricate different types of trailers and tippers in our plant to increase value addition of up to 40 to 60 per cent with the goal to achieve domestic self-sufficiency and serve the West Africa regional market."
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He went on, stating, "As you are aware, Dangote also owns majority shares of Peugeot Automobile of Nigeria in Kaduna where we assemble small vehicles. We (DSWAL) are a joint venture company with a total investment of 100 million dollars formed for the truck assembly which is owned 60 per cent by Dangote industries, 30 percent by Sinotruck China and five per cent by Andas.
"I am sure we are going to participate in the new production of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) which this government is driving.
"But, we in Dangote, are actually committed to buying 10,000 of the CNG trucks of which 1,500 are arriving this June/July. Already, about 500 are at the port. So this company has the installed capacity to assemble and produce 10,000 trucks annually and create about 3,000 jobs across Nigeria."
The Senate President lauded the Dangote Group's investments in Lagos, in other parts of the country and outside Nigeria.
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