Chinese conglomerate China Wu Yi is building a Sh10 billion housing materials plant in Athi River after bagging major tenders in the country.
TUESDAY AUGUST 23 2016
By EDWIN OKOTH, [email protected]
Chinese conglomerate China Wu Yi is building a Sh10 billion housing materials plant in Athi River after bagging major tenders in the country. The factory, expected to be complete in June, will manufacture precast materials that will also be sold to other construction firms. The multinational is putting up the plant through its locally incorporated subsidiary China Wu Yi Precast (Kenya) Company Limited. Its chairman Qiu Liangxin said the project would create a modern building industry base for research, manufacture, sale and demonstration of pre-cast elements in Kenya.
“The development of prefabricated building is significant to the transformation of construction, with advanced guarantee on construction quality and safety,” Mr Liangxin said. “We have been behind various projects in this region and this will be our first building materials producer established overseas.”
The factory will sit on 30 acres of land off Mombasa Road. It will include a pre-cast element plant, a display area, warehouse and a construction material supermarket which will introduce materials from China, effectively making it a one-stop shop for building materials in the country. The supermarket will stock among others stones, ceramic tiles, bathroom appliances, construction electrical fittings, lamps and kitchen furniture. The pre-casts will include solid wall panels, hollow core slabs, sandwich wall panels, facade panels, lift shafts, staircases and foundation piles. Customers will be able to obtain the pre-cast materials to fit their housing designs enabling fast and less costly construction. The firm has partnered with two German technology services providers, Ebawe Anlagetechnik to supply equipment for the concrete pre-casts production and Nemetschek to provide the software for the design of the housing parts. Industrialisation Cabinet Secretary Adan Mohamed who presided over the ground breaking ceremony on Saturday said the project was among those the government signed a cooperation agreement during the China-Africa Business Council in Beijing.
“This is basically industrialising the construction sector because this will shorten building period by more than 50 per cent,” Mr Mohamed said. “The building and construction industry is rapidly growing and this investment is very timely for our economy and in line with our industrialisation blue print. The number of cement companies around here will no doubt have new demand for cement from this firm.”
China Wu Yi, which participated in the construction of the Thika Superhighway, the University of Nairobi Tower, Mama Lucy Kibaki Hospital and several apartments in Nairobi is also planning to put up an iron and steel factory in Kenya in the near term. The plant, whose timelines were undisclosed, will produce over three million tonnes of steel targeting public and private sector projects. China Wu Yi will also rely on the plants to feed its own projects in the country where it has emerged as one of the largest construction firms.
The multinational last year said it had won four construction tenders in Kenya worth Sh10.1 billion. Its latest contract is the Sh16.4 billion reconstruction and capacity enhancement of James Gichuru Junction-Rironi road. The road works, meant to ease traffic flow in the capital, is being funded by World Bank and the government.