The Dangote Sinotruk West Africa Limited, is an assembler and producer of a full range of commercial vehicles, covering heavy duty trucks and other semi trailers, serving the local transportation industry.
Aliko Dangote, Founder and CEO of Dangote Group and Conglomerate in a conference states that “Joint ventures Company with a total investment of $100m funds for the truck assembly, which is owned 60% by Dangote Industries, 30% by Sinotruk China and 5% by others.”
The decision to invest in the truck by the management was part of their back integration strategies to add value and reduce imports.
According to Dangote, “our aim is to meet the expected current demand of this segment of automobiles required for logistics, construction, food and beverages industries in Nigeria and I’m sure we are going to fully participate in the new Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) which I think the government is driving. But we alone in Dangote, we have actually committed to buying 10,000 of the CNG trucks,” he stated.
Speaking about the milestone, Akpabio Godswill, The Senate President of Nigeria said, “I’m sure even the President of the country would be glad to receive reports from us on what is going on in Lagos. And how you and the governor of Lagos are collaborating together with the federal government to take children off the street, off criminality into gained employment.”
Babajide Sanwo Olu, Governor of Lagos State added “We have seen the benefits of what they are doing here, we have procured from them the orange compactor trucks that were seen on the roads of Lagos. We have also publicly made another order for 100 trucks of the compactor because we found out that they are reliable.”
Hikmat Bahadur Thapa, Group General Manager Project, in an interview with the press, disclosed they are working tirelessly to mount the trucks. He also stated they are doing multiple jobs, including welding, and painting, to produce more than 30,000 trucks per annum.
Ifeanyi Uba, an industrialist and politician spoke on the economic value of the development, “It’s a big boost for Nigeria and those Nigerians that are in the industry of transportation, believe that we can have innovative vehicles that can serve. That’s a good plus for Nigeria,” he added.
In the next 12 months, the plant will begin to fabricate different types of trailers to increase value addition up to 60%.
