PPC acquires three quarries in Botswana

Brian Benza
Staff Writer | Wednesday October 5, 2011 00:00

 

In a statement, the company said that the acquisition, which comprises three quarries in Gaborone, Francistown and Selebi -Phikwe is part of its Southern Africa expansion strategy. PPC already owns the Kgale quarry  - situated in Gaborone's Kgale Hills, which mainly supplies an extensive range of granite products to the civil construction industry.

The three new quarries will expand PPC's footprint and make PPC's aggregates division the largest aggregate producer in Botswana, the company has said.

As a division of the largest cement making company in Southern Africa, PPC Aggregates is one of the main suppliers of quality construction aggregates to the civil constructions as well as products for the chemical, metallurgical and agricultural industries. 'Various alternatives were considered to increase PPC's aggregates presence in Botswana. Both Gaborone and Francistown are forecast to be major growth nodes in Botswana and this was an obvious choice to develop our aggregates business further.

'Acquiring the assets of an existing business made more sense than embarking on a greenfields expansion,' said PPC's executive for the aggregates division, Riaan Redelinghuys.

The acquisition comes at a time when construction, which was the highest contributor to GDP growth in the second quarter of this year, is booming in Botswana with many government and private sector sponsored projects currently underway.

The robust growth in the construction sector is on the back of the huge investment that government has made into infrastructure development of roads, airports, the P11 billion Morupule power station, dams, and other private sponsored development such as property developments in the new CBD, Cut 8 project at Jwaneng mine, Boseto copper mine in Maun and AK6 in Boteti.

PPC is the leading supplier of cement in Southern Africa through eight cement manufacturing facilities and three milling depots in South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe that can produce around eight million tons of cement products each year.

The P50 million investment would see PPC's aggregates division increase its total capacity from three million to about four million tonnes per annum and gain approximately 100 employees, the company added.

PPC CEO, Paul Stuiver, said: 'We recently communicated to our investors that we are pursuing expansion opportunities in other parts of Africa; however this acquisition shows we are still considering any good opportunities to expand our local business.' In anticipation of booming demand due to the hive of construction projects in the country, PPC Aggregates moved its semi-mobile crushing plant from a quarry in Mooiplaas in South Africa' to the Kgale Quarry near Gaborone in 2009, allowing it to increase production from 500,000 tonnes per year to 620,000 tonnes per year of aggregate products.

Growth in the construction sector is on the back of the huge investment that government has made into infrastructure development of roads, airports, the P11 billion Morupule power station, dams, as well as other private sponsored development such as property developments in the new CBD, Cut 8 project at Jwaneng mine, Boseto copper mine in Maun and AK6 in Boteti.