By CHATULA KANGALI –
ZAMBEZI Portland Cement (ZPC) Limited says it has been losing K13 on every bag of cement it sells from the time Dangote Cement entered the market.
Operations director Daniele Ventriglia said in an interview in Ndola that the company was losing K13 on every bag it sold.
He said despite maintaining its market share, the competition in the cement business was stiff.
“Our 50 kilogrammes of cement is now selling less by K13 from the time Dangote penetrated the market, we are operating on a loss,” he said.
Mr Ventriglia said ZPC was working on creating a more efficient production cost in order to remain competitive in the cement production business.
He said the company had maintained its market share and that it was selling 1,500 tonnes of the commodity per day.
Mr Ventriglia said the company was exporting 10,000 tonnes of cement monthly and 30,000 were locally consumed.
ZPC has a production of 1,800 tonnes of cement per day.
The company is set to increase its production of blocks from 4,000 to 50,000 a day before the end of this year.
Mr Ventriglia said ZPC would invest US$4 million in new state-of-the-art block-making machinery.
“The machines are expected to arrive from Italy in the next three months, before the year ends. Production of blocks will increase from 4,000 to 5,000. An addition of 25 people will be employed,” he said.
Mr Ventriglia said ZPC had remained competitive in block production because its product was of high quality and at an affordable price.