He also disclosed that the African Natural Resources and Mines Limited, a subsidiary of the African Industries Group, has established a fully integrated mining and steel processing plant in Gujeni village in the Kagarko Local Government Area of Kaduna State.
He also said that the fully-integrated mining and steel processing plant had a mining capacity of over five million tonnes per annum, and would promote Nigeria’s position in the world due to its peculiar nature
He said this at the recently concluded Nigeria-Africa Natural Resources and Energy Investment Summit in Abuja.
The GMD, who was represented at the event by the Head of Mining of the company, Partha Ghosh, said, “Nigeria has the 12th largest steel deposits in the world with more than three billion tonnes resources in Kogi, Enugu, Zamfara and Kaduna states.
“Annually $3.3bn is still spent on steel imports which impact the economy. With focusing on steel Nigeria can reduce dependency on imports and the economy would become a major player in global markets.”
He added, “The project will also bring in significant savings in foreign exchange by import substitution and add to foreign exchange reserves when our mining project starts to export Direct Reduced Iron to other West African countries.”
He said African Natural Resources and Mines Limited would help to reduce the nation’s $3.3bn steel import.
He added that this plant, which would, directly and indirectly, employ up to 4000 Nigerians, was more than 95 per cent ready and would be commissioned by the president later this year.
“We are going to produce steel, and we are investing over $600m on the project. The project is going to commission soon this year, and it has been visited by the ministry, and the president is coming to commission it later this year,” he said.
