Saudi tycoon sets up $19.5 m cement firm in Ethiopia

March 11, 2007 (ADDIS ABABA) — Ethiopian-born Saudi magnate Sheikh Mohammad al-Amudi paid on Thursday 8 March close to 19.5m dollars on behalf of Derba-MIDROC (Muhammad Investment Development Research Organization Company) Cement Factory, a subsidiary company of MIDROC-Ethiopia, which has hired China National Building materials (CNBM) to build the largest cement factory in Ethiopia.

Established with a capital of 2.4bn birr, Derba-MIDRIOC is the largest investment in the pipeline. Eighty per cent of the company is owned by Sheikh al-Amudi while the remaining share goes to MIDROC-Ethiopia, the state-run ENA reported.

The company was granted over 123 hectares of plot to construct a cement plant with a production capacity of 7,000 tonnes a day, an amount more than twice the size of what the state-owned Mugher Cement Factory is producing now.

The Chinese company was awarded, in January 2007, a turn-key project to build the factory near Chancho town, 70 km west of Addis Ababa in the Oromia Regional State.

The total investment for the factory is projected to be 310m US dollars.

(ST)