President John Dramani Mahama on Thursday inaugurated the world’s largest calcined clay cement plant at Tema, a USD 110 million facility that its builders say will cut Ghana’s annual clinker import bill by hundreds of millions of dollars while reducing carbon emissions from cement production.
The plant, operated by CBI Ghana Limited under its Supacem Cement brand, has an installed capacity of 1.5 million tonnes of cement and 400,000 tonnes of calcined clay annually. It has already created 109 direct jobs for engineers, technicians, and other professionals, with more than 1,000 additional jobs generated across the supply chain. The facility is designed to operate continuously in line with the government’s 24-hour economy policy, and uses locally sourced clay from the Torgome Traditional Area in the Volta Region to partially replace imported clinker.
CBI Ghana Managing Director Frédéric Albrecht said the plant was built with capacity intentionally exceeding the company’s own production needs. “We did not build this plant for CBI alone. We built it to support the next generation of construction in Ghana and beyond,” he said. The company has already begun supplying calcined clay to Ghacem, a Heidelberg Materials subsidiary, marking the first time a Ghanaian producer has supplied the material to a third-party manufacturer.
CBI Ghana’s Supacem limestone calcined clay cement (LC3) technology reduces clinker content to 45 percent, well below the 60 percent or more typical of conventional cement. The company is targeting mass production with under 400 kg of carbon dioxide per tonne by 2026, and its dual approach of lowering emissions in its own product and supplying calcined clay to others is projected to avoid 380,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.
Mahama described the commissioning as tangible evidence that his administration’s Economic Reset Agenda was producing industrial results, citing recent inaugurations in textiles, steel, ceramics, and glass. The president said the government aims to raise manufacturing’s contribution to gross domestic product to at least 15 percent by 2030, with the potential to generate up to 500,000 jobs in the sector.
CBI Ghana confirmed the plant is joining the government’s Big Push infrastructure programme, meaning locally produced LC3 cement will be used in roads, interchanges, culverts, and drainage projects across the country. Ghana currently spends close to USD 500 million annually importing clinker, a figure the new plant is expected to reduce significantly.
