The Nigeria housing construction and manufacturing sector recently received a big boost as fibre cement board, an innovative building material, is now manufactured in Nigeria by the new material Nigeria limited, a company which is part of the Sinoma/CNBM group, a 500 company with headquarters in Beijing, China.

Addressing journalists during the new product news briefing, the Managing Director of the company, Mr Jackie Dai Hui said New Material Nigeria Limited, recently opened its factory in Kuje area of Abuja, its first outside China and is already producing fibre cement boards of global standards.

Speaking on the cost benefits of using fibre cement boards, Hui said it saves material and manpower costs and reflects positively on the duration of project delivery.

“You save cost. For example, this building, maybe we spend one year, two years to finish this building but using our fibre cement board for partition, you can complete all the building in three months. You save the human resource, you save the cement, you save the block and most importantly, you protect the environment. It’s green and better than block,” he explained.

While conducting journalists around the factory, he noted that the premises had the most up to date measures for industrial safety and had passed fire safety tests by the federal fire service. With industrial equipment and an installed production capacity of 5 million square meters of fibre cement boards per year, the factory employs 119 Nigerians at various levels. Dai Hui said the factory also sources its raw materials locally.

“Yeah, we source locally. That’s why we have the confidence to grow and stay in Nigeria. For instance, last month we were able to locate a source for one of our materials, paper pulp, from Kano. For the cement, we use Lafarge, Dangote and Bua. The others are quartz sand, and stones, which we source locally.”

Nigeria’s housing sector has a deficit of at least 20 million units and experts have suggested several cost-effective measures aimed at bridging the gap. With a superior emphasis on strength, sound and fireproofing qualities, the local demand for fibre cement boards in Nigeria has spiked.

The $50 million New Material Nigeria factory meets this demand. However, Dai Hui said this is just the beginning as another factory is planned for Lagos in the near future.

Also expressing a desire to be part of Nigeria’s export-oriented industrial development, Dai Hui said the future is bright as the company plans to use Nigeria as a manufacturing hub for the export of fibre cement boards to the entire West African region.

“With the support from the Nigerian people, we can expand and so Nigeria can be a hub of exportation to the whole ECOWAS,” he said.