For a nation that wants to develop her economy, it must look inwards to identify areas where it has comparative advantage over other nation and efforts should be geared towards the development of the identified areas.
Apart from the hydrocarbon {crude oil} deposit which is Nigeria is well blessed with, the country also have comparative advantage in the solid minerals sector owning to the large deposit of mineral deposit in the different parts of the country and if the Nation is to develop and attain her vision of 2020 target, more efforts should be geared towards the development of the solid mineral sector of the Nigeria economy.
As at the last count, the Ministry of Mines and Steel Development have discovered about 33 commercially available industrial mineral in Nigeria and granite is one of such industrial mineral. The granite deposit in Nigeria is estimated to be in billions of metric tons.
The earth crust is filled with different types of rock which ranges from igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks. Granite is an igneous rock formed from the cooling of magma in an exothermic process. Granite popularly known as chippings /gravel is a very hard stone good for building and construction works globally. It is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive felsic, igneous rock. It has a medium to coarse texture occasionally with some individual crystals larger than the groundmass forming a rock known as porphyry. It can be pink to dark gray or even black depending on their chemistry and mineralogy.
Granite is a hard, usually grey, stone used for building and the most common rock type on the continental land masses. It is widely distributed throughout the continental crust of the earth and is the most abundant basement rock that underlies the relatively thin sedimentary veneer of the continents.
Nigeria is richly endowed with granite stone and other related solid minerals like Marble, Dolomite and Basalt etc. It is found in Enugu, Ebonyi, Kogi, Plateau, Ogun, Oyo, Osun and Ekiti etc. Hence, granite is among the most available and affordable building material. Nigeria been a country located in the tropics has these rocks in commercial quantity and it is a means of livelihood for many in some parts of the country.
In the past, it was mined manually but now there are sophisticated equipment that make quarrying very easy. Lagos as a cosmopolitan city developing by the day cannot do without granite. There is high demand for the product in Lagos, Ibadan, Abeokuta and other surrounding cities. The product is equally needed in other parts of the country.
Lagos is not an igneous environment where granite could be found, all the real estate developers, contractors and Civil Engineering and Construction companies gets their granite need from nearby towns.
Its hard nature made it a very suitable and durable material for most Civil Engineering and Construction works. It is used in various ways as in;
Road Construction and Dimensional stones
Building of Houses, Bridges and Drainages
Manufacture of Marbles and Flooring Tiles
Production of cement blocks
Interior Decorations
Art works (Antiquities) etc.
The Market:
In 2004, the total production was about 15 million tones whereas the demand was 16.2 million tons leaves a supply gap of 1.2 million tons. The market is vast even to the international level. That is, the product could be sold locally or exported out of the country with over 200% return. Granite business is one that can be done by people of all class. The business could be done in large scale and small scale as the investor financial strength is. And as I said earlier, Lagos is one of the fastest developing cities in Nigeria with lots of building and construction works done daily but Lagos does not have granite so all the ones consumed in Lagos comes from the nearby towns.
The market is stratified into three {3} namely, large scale, medium and small scale .
LARGE SCALE: A QUARRY OWNER:
An investor would require millions naira to start and operate a quarry .The actual cost would be based on the scale the investor wants to start the business. The cost of the machinery required for the crushing of the granite which make up between 60-70 % of the cost of the establishing the business is based on the three {3} factors which are the input of granite,the output of the granite and the capacity of the machine required. The investor would need acquire/lease a rocky land for a period of 1-5 years and site a quarry for the manufacture of granite for sale to developers or to be used as raw material for the production of flooring tiles, marbles and antiquities etc. After leasing the rocky land, the investor will then have to purchase heavy quarrying equipments like; The Crusher, Excavator, Payloader, Waybridge, Dumper, Carriage trucks (10-40 tons capacity) etc.
It is advisable to import the equipment from USA, Europe or China as the locally made ones are of very low quality, thus not reliable.
The investor can choose to lease a complete quarry that has been poorly managed with all the equipment intact. The next thing is technical expertise, the technical know-how aspect is very important because this is the key to success in this business. You either engage the services of Chinese or a Nigerian.
Further more, after fixing the technical and mechanical need of the business, another thing is Effective and Efficient management of the Man, Machine and Material to achieve result (profit making). Thus, the need for a business and or management expert that can make things happen. Note that no matter how good your production, machines & staffs are, without a good marketing structure, the business will fail.
As a quarry owner, you could sell to agents and suppliers or directly to the final user.
MEDIUM SCALE OPERATOR:
As A medium scale investor,the investor buys from the quarry owners and sells to the final users who may be real estate developers, contractors, civil engineers and resellers etc. A good supplier could be lucky to buy on credit from the quarry owners or agents and payback after he/she has supplied and collected money. This could be achieved through good business relationship and integrity.
SMALL SCALE OPERATOR:
This does not require any capital to begin; all you need is the ability to market the product by moving around major cities like Lagos and informing developers, contractors etc that you can supply them granite for their building and construction work. And immediately you secure a deal to supply, you run to a registered supplier who will provide the goods and you take your commission. The commission is usually based on your negotiations with the buyer and the supplier.
Our reports are designed to assist start-ups to understand the legal and financial requirements of starting the business, the market trends vis-a-vis demand and supply, competition, risk identification and mitigation strategies.
You can order our detailed feasibility report on how to establish and run a quarry plant in Nigeria by clicking on the link below.
Report Title: HOW TO ESTABLISH A QUARRY PLANT IN NIGERIA; THE FEASIBILITY REPORT.
Report Code: FORA/2013/0804
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