Industrials group AECI is keen to start supplying asphalt to road builders in East Africa and would be "happy to invest" in manufacturing plants there, CEO Mark Dytor said on Wednesday. AECI wanted to take the recently acquired Much Asphalt, Southern Africa’s largest supplier of hot and cold asphalt products, into new markets in Africa where the group already had a footprint. "We see in places like Tanzania, Kenya and Zambia, there’s money going into infrastructure. We are there — we have registered entities on the continent that we will start leveraging." In Kenya, for instance, the authorities plan to construct a 473km four-lane highway between Nairobi and Mombasa. Dytor said asphalt plants needed to be within 200km of the projects they serviced, and AECI would be "happy to invest" in them, having made similar types of investments in explosives plants. Asphalt plants usually cost between R70m and R100m to construct, he said.
"And of course, you put them near a quarry where o...
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