Ajaokuta Steel Company: Lack Of Transportation For Raw Materials Major Problem

Lack of logistics to move raw materials to Ajaokuta Steel Company has been identified as a major problem facing the plant Mr Musa Sada, the Minister of Mines and Steel Development, made this known at Ministerial Platform 2014 in Abuja on Monday.
He said being an integrated steel company, it required a lot of logistics to transport raw materials to the plant. Sada said the concept of Ajaokuta was to produce 1.3 million tonnes of steel annually in the first, 2.6 in the second, and 5.2 in the third phases respectively. “Now let us look at the first phase of 1.3 million tonnes. For you to produce 1.3 million tonnes of steel, you need to transport materials six times that volume. .”So, you can imagine the amount of materials you have to move up and down. But unfortunately these infrastructure like the railways and the rail limbs have not been developed’’, he said. 12
The minister said that this had become a big problem in the development of the steel sector. Sada, however, said the present administration had made efforts to address the challenges. According to him, a lot of units like the power plant, the rolling mills, the lime plants, the engineering works and the metallurgical training centre have been completed.