Raysut Cement Company (RCC), in a filing listed on Muscat Securities Market (MSM), has announced its plans to set up a cement grinding unit in the Duqm Special Economic Zone (SEZ) with an investment of around $30 million. In the filing, Ghose Jyotirmoy Pratul Krishna, CEO, said the proposed plant will be designed and built to produce around one million tonnes of cement per annum.
Based in Salalah, RCC, which holds a 40% market share in the market, the company has been constantly expanding into both local and regional markets with major investments and deals.
Earlier in August, the Sultanate’s largest cement provider, signed an OMR 19.5mn deal for Shari’a-compliant financing facilities with Bank Nizwa. The deal involves long-term financing worth OMR12mn with a working capital of OMR3mn for RCC’s Salalah operations and OMR4.5mn for Sohar Cement Factory’s construction and expansion.
In a bid to expand its global foothold, the company also signed a joint venture to set up a US$40 million cement grinding unit in Berbera, Somaliland. In a statement following a regulatory filing on the Muscat Securities Market (MSM), Raysut Cement said, the setting up of the grinding plant was yet another step to advance its continuing aggressive expansion strategy into African markets. The partnership, it said, plans to set up a 1 million tonnes per annum capacity cement plant with an estimated investment of around $40 million. Raysut Cement will own a 55% shareholding in the new project, with MSG retaining the balance 45%.
In December last year, RCC also announced that it was interested in acquiring ARM Cement Ltd. of Kenya. An acquisition would be valued at more than $100 million, the Salalah-based company had said in an e-mail statement.
RCC was looking not just at Africa but also places such as Georgia, where it owns a mine with more than 30 million tonnes of limestone reserves. According to Ghose, the Board of Directors had already approved an initial study for the purpose in Georgia.
RCC, located in Salalah, Oman, has a customer base across Oman, Yemen, Somalia, Mauritius, Qatar, Iraq, Tanzania, Sudan and beyond. The company’s network includes five storage and packing terminals. It expanded its production bases to Ras Al Khaimah in the UAE through 100 per cent acquisition of Pioneer Cement Industries, an integrated cement and clinker grinding plant, in 2011.
The current capacity of Raysut Cement stands at 6.4 million tons per annum. The company had posted a growth of 26.6% in revenues last year with turnover recorded at OMR 91mn, a significant growth from OMR 71.8mn in 2017.
