Cement wrongly labelled in Nigeria – Lafarge

From Ayodele Samuel,Lagos

Lafarge Nigeria has said that what is needed to address the issue of wrong cement application in the country was proper and detailed product labelling by cement manufacturers in Nigeria

Lafarge Nigeria General Manager Industrial Performance, Lanre Opakunle, addressing newsmen during a facility tour to the Ewekoro Cement plant said that there is need to review how cement products were labelled in order to avail end users proper information and directions for right application and results.

“We discovered that the labelling is not adequate today and we made some proposals but those proposals have not been taken on-board but we will keep making efforts to see that they are taken on-board,” he said.

He disclosed that there was a part on labelling which they highlighted an all-stakeholders deliberations because sometimes people can be naive despite their level of education and right labelling will help to ensure that people have the right information out there at their disposal with the burden on the professionals to do their

job as it was the duty of manufacturers to inform the consumers about what their products can be used for.

“Lafarge is the only cement manufacturer in the market that puts the uses and specifications of cement on their bags. In our technical submission to SON we said we want to do more than that; we want to really put it in a way that the lay man can understand the uses and what the mix should look like,” he said.

Opakunle noted that issues of cement application should not dwell on the grades of cement rather it should be about knowing the right mix as cement does not work in isolation but with concrete.

Stressing that Lafarge was the first to produce 42.5grade cement in the country and was duly certified by SON in 2012 to that regard.