Keeping It Green
Environmentally conscious chinese industrial park supplies Zambia’s construction market with top-quality building materials
from Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, a road stretches southeastward for about 19 km, through a scenic landscape of small valleys surrounded by green hills, and ends at the gates of a huge industrial park. This is where the China National Building Materials Group (CNBM) decided to establish the Cnbm-zambia Industrial Park.
“Chinese companies operate very efficiently and have a good corporate culture. We can learn a lot by working shoulder to shoulder with our Chinese friends. I hope that the industrial park project will improve our livelihood,” Alex Tend, Security Director of the Cnbm-zambia Industrial Park, told People’s Daily, one of China’s premier newspapers.
In October 2015, as an integral part of the Belt and Road Initiative, an industrial park project to be invested, built and managed by CNBM was put forward. At first, many villagers in the surrounding communities were afraid that the industrial park would harm the environment. However, as the project progressed, they gradually changed their minds and, like Tend, became enthusiastic supporters of the park.
Green focus
CNBM President Song Zhiping said his company has attached great importance to environmental protection issues, a critical concern for the inhabitants of Lusaka. Indeed, the Zambian capital is often nicknamed the “garden city” due to its many parks.
“We must focus on the local people and integrate ourselves into the local economic and social development by building longterm ‘garden-style’ factories in Africa,” he said.
According to information provided by CNBM, the total area of the Cnbm-zambia Industrial Park and its associated mining sites exceeds 100 square km and its total planned investment is $500 million, to be divided into two phases. The first phase already saw the opening of a cement plant with an annual capacity of 1 million tons, as well as the creation of production lines for sintered bricks, concrete and aggregate materials, with a total investment of approximately $200 million. These facilities were put into production in June 2018, shortly before the official opening ceremony of Cnbm-zambia Industrial Park, which