Lafarge new technology raises fresh hope for low cost, mass housing
Apparently responding to the deepening concern that Nigeria’s housing deficit of well over 17 million units may persist if the traditional method of building using brick and mortar continues, Lafarge Africa Plc has come up with a new building technology that mass-produces houses at increased speed and reduced cost.
Known as Aluminum Shuttering, the new building technology has the capacity to produce a studio house comprising one room, toilet with bath-room and a kitchen in just 12 days and, given a stable land and basic infrastructure, this house could be delivered at N1.5 million.
Lafarge, said to be the largest building materials manufacturer in the world, is a company that is very sensitive to its environment and in demonstration of this, it is out not only to promote mass housing at low cost using a new technology, but is also responding to the challenging housing situation in the country which the government seems to be clueless about.
“This is our response to the housing deficit in this country. We are providing solution to that by building low cost housing and providing homes that are as cheap as possible with quality and durability”, Jumoke Adegunle, Head, Affordable Housing and Buildings, revealed to journalists at the launch of the building technology in Lagos recently.
Depending on design, location and other variables , a three-bedroom bungalow costs between N4 million and N6 million to build and Adegunle said it could be delivered in less than two months, stressing that, at any rate, their production costs was 10-15 percent lower with up to 20 percent higher speed.
Tunde Isiolaitan, Chairman, Tye-Wall Contractors Limited, whose company built the sample studio house, explained that the new technology was a product of their partnership with an American construction firm called Walls, Tiles and Forms (WTF) Inc. “This is basically a concrete home and the shell was done in just two days. The finishing and other things took another 10 days. Our system of production suits Lafarge’s dream of mass housing production at low cost pricing. The houses are so solid that bullet cannot penetrate them”, he assured.
Continuing, he said, “all the electrical and plumbing materials are in-built. The thickness of the wall is about 4 inches. Repair can easily be carried out because any part of the wall can be opened up using a diamond cutter. All you need is to have the drawing of the building”.
Isiolaitan pointed out however, that the technology could be a little bit expensive if used to build just a single unit, but “when building a large volume of housing, you could leverage economy of scale to reduce prices, hence making the units cheap; so, while it takes one to two months to build what we have here through the traditional method, you can use 12 days to do it with this technology”.
Loren Zanin, CEO, Aggregates and Concrete at Lafarge, emphasized that this method was the best for mass housing “because it is cheaper, smoother, stronger and more durable; if you build the traditional way, it costs much to do the rendering (plastering), but here you don’t need much rendering because the concrete walls are sooth; you need just 1-2 millimetre rendering; so, you need less materials, you build quicker and avoid wastes. All these reduce both time and cost”.
Adegunle disclosed that they were in partnership with the Federal Ministry of Housing which has allocated to them five hectares of land in the Gwagwalada area of Abuja to build 500 low cost housing units for low income earners.
“We are going to deliver these units from next year. We are also working with other developers. In the pipeline, we have 10,000 units and still counting. People want us to deploy this technology to build for them. We are building one, two, three-bedroom houses”, she said, adding, “our target are people at the bottom of the housing pyramid; we are not building for the middle or upper class”.
CHUKA UROKO