AfriSam has been at the heart of African infrastructure development for the past 80 years, having established itself as a leading supplier of the highest quality construction materials and technical solutions guided by its core values of people, planet and performance.
Among its principal offerings are the products forming AfriSam’s range of cement, readymix concrete and aggregate materials, the highest quality and most environmentally-responsible products from a company renowned for both its technical expertise and provision of superior quality construction materials. Operating as part of an industry which, by nature, has a huge impact on the environment, AfriSam looks to achieve its constant growth and development in a manner geared toward sustainable development. It is through its extensive research on improving cement and cement-based products, as well as its partnerships with many various organisations with parallel aims, that it will continue to ensure that its customers receive the most advanced and environmentally-friendly products on the market, without compromising on quality and durability.
Among its principal offerings is the vast range of cement that AfriSam has crafted over its 80 year history. One of the most popular of these products is its All Purpose Cement with C-Tech, the company’s top performer in concrete, mortar and plaster applications, and whose specially blended high quality formulation offers 15% more concrete per bag than before. Billed as a masterpiece of cement engineering, meanwhile, is its greener alternative, AfriSam’s Eco Building Cement. This is the most environmentally-friendly cement currently on the market, and forms a large part of the company-wide drive towards a sustainable life for future generations. A unique combination of Portland cement and mineral components, it embodies AfriSam’s desire to protect the environment and to lessen its carbon footprint while still providing the utmost in construction materials. Slagment, another strand of its concrete dealings, is the result of Ground Granulated Blast Furnace Slag (GGBFS) from the steel and iron industry being dried and ground down to a fine consistency, then used as a partial replacement to cement. AfriSam’s plant in Vanderbijlpark has the capacity to produce over 800 000 tons of this slagment each year year, contributing to the building of major structures such as dams, bridges and roads for more than 50 years.
It was the cement aspect of AfriSam’s operations that almost brought about an historic merger with PPC Ltd earlier this year. The aim was to create a dominant player in Africa’s second biggest economy and expand on the continent, with the enlarged company to “contribute meaningfully to South Africa and the continent’s developmental plans,” according to the Public Investment Corp, Africa’s biggest fund manager and majority owner of AfriSam. “There has been extensive discussion between the two companies on the merger proposal,” explained AfriSam, although, “the parties have not been able to reach consensus on the terms of the merger and therefore have, for now, terminated their discussions.” For the time being, then, AfriSam is instead looking to “continue implementing its growth strategy of sustainable, value enhancement for all stakeholders,” and thus further strengthen its stranglehold over the competition in Africa. PPC’s position was similar, itself, “committed to its strategy of enhancing the company’s position in southern Africa and expanding its footprint into other African countries,” instead.
Portland cement is the most common type in general use around the world, having served mankind well for over a century since its development in England in the mid 19th century. However, with the shifting focus within the industry toward sustainable methods of operating becoming ever more of an overriding concern, its high carbon footprint and relatively inferior performance in many traditional applications compared to composite cements render it somewhat a product of a bygone era. AfriSam has turned its hand to specially engineering cement products to extract maximum value from the use of mineral components. Its C-Tech cements are expanding what was previously thought possible of of composite technology to offer exceptional performance characteristics which are also environmentally responsible. “Our achievements in the arena of composite technology – C-Tech – personify AfriSam’s ethos of innovation, aimed at ensuring that our customers always enjoy the benefits of high performing products,” Mike McDonald, manager of AfriSam’s Centre of Product Excellence, says. “This methodology is also driven by our commitment to supporting the environment by producing cements with ever lower carbon footprints.”
“Our C-Tech products are the result of an on-going development process that began in 2000 and is still moving forward, beyond conventional boundaries,” continues McDonald. “The mineral components in these cements have been engineered to make the resultant composite cement superior to pure cement. These products offer a spectrum of functional attributes that provide our customers guaranteed quality performance.” C-Tech technology reduces the traditional Portland clinker content of cement, itself very carbon intensive, ensuring that AfriSam cements can begin to gain real ground on reducing their impact on the environment. Their mineral components also carry far less embodied carbon than clinker, which effectively reduces the carbon footprint associated with the cement production process.
Theconstructional advantages of cement products developed with this C-Tech technology are also notable. There is an improved workability and an increase in resistance to erosion, an area where traditional Portland cement finds itself particularly vulnerable, as well as a reduced permeability to increase resistance to corrosion. Through employing this technology AfriSam is also able to conserve natural resources such as limestone, as the use of C-Tech minerals in the manufacturing of composite cements effectively recycles materials from other industries, mitigating the need to acquire them via landfill. Further refining the application of these advances will play a crucial role in reducing the carbon footprint associated with producing such vast quantities of this most widely used material on earth. While recent advances in kiln design and alternative low energy clinkers have helped to kick-start this process, the greatest carbon savings from the industry are likely to be made by the inclusion of mineral components like limestone, GGBFS and PFA, as exemplified by AfriSam’s latest development.
Together with this drive toward sustainable innovation, came the announcement from AfriSam CEO Stephan Olivier earlier this year that ‘the health of the company had been restored’, since the firm’s balance sheet and shareholder registry were overhauled after a costly empowerment deal in 2007. “We’re a very stable organisation — the empowerment-related debt challenges are behind us and we are focused on defending our South African business and growing the business faster in the rest of Africa,” he explained. AfriSam has spent at least R1.5bn on what it calls “efficiency upgrades” to its plants over the past decade, which included a R80m project to further upgrade its Ulco cement facility in the Northern Cape. The investments “have kept us up to speed” with the technologies and efficiencies that new operators had brought to the South African market, Olivier said. This all forms part of the company’s gearing up across the board to be perfectly placed to handle the growth in future demand it expects to see, making investments in a variety of expansion projects designed to boost its internal capacity. This has been paired with a re-engineering of its entire product portfolio to meet future demand and avoid shortages, and thus achieve the sustainable growth towards which it continues to strive.