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East Africa Portland Cement Company has announced long-term plans to shift its energy source from electricity to coal to cut down power bills and operation costs.
Speaking during the ground-breaking ceremony for Cement Mill No. 5 at the company’s Athi River Plant, board chairman Benson Ndeta said electricity consumed between 45 and 50 per cent of the company’s total input and using coal to drive the machines would reduce the energy cost.
“Electricity forms our most expensive input. We plan to put up a coal mill at our plant to reduce our energy cost by 30 per cent,” he said.
Portland’s power consumption is set to go up when the new mill is fully operational in the coming year. The mill, which will churn out 80 tonnes of cement per hour will increase the company’s annual cement milling capacity from the current 720,000 metric tonnes to about 1.4 million metric tonnes.
Portland is among the biggest consumers of electricity who have been asked to switch their production activities to night-time to avoid plunging the country into darkness.
The chairman was non committal on where the company would source the coal from, although coal deposits have been found in more than a half of the wells drilled so far in sections of Kitui and Makueni districts, according to details of a report prepared by the Ministry of Energy.
Samples analysed in South Africa recently have returned a positive report on the quality of the coal, which is in some ways comparable or better than that found in South Africa.
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