By Oumie Mendy
SRN Steels Gambia Limited Factory on Friday launched an oxygen plant in Kitty village. SRN was established in December 2019 as a steel manufacturing company with the aim of meeting the supply requirements of the country’s construction industry. With the launching of its oxygen plant factory, the company is now set to address the dilemma in shortage of oxygen in the country’s hospitals with an eye for the regional market. The Gambia had faced serious shortages of oxygen during the peak of Covid-19 which resulted in complications for many Covid patients.
Sanjay Kumar Sharma, the CEO and managing director of the company, said the oxygen plant has the capacity to produce the needed steel products for hospital use in the country.
“We know there is only one oxygen plant in The Gambia which cannot produce the needed oxygen for consumption by various facilities and industries in the country. We have also seen how the hospitals struggle for oxygen especially during the Covid pandemic,” he said, adding that with the new factory “there will be no more oxygen shortage”.
The plant, he added, has the capacity to produce enough oxygen for the factory and hospitals which are the company’s main priority.
“The factory will also produce ion rods among other things to meet its high demand and therefore contributing to nation building,” he added.
He said the SRN plant will also manufacture materials for housing construction with the capacity of meeting local and sub-regional demand.
“The plant equally does construction of power plants and the construction of tourism projects. The production capacity of the plant is 5000 metric tons per month and the Gambia imports about 5000 metric tons of steel a month, so the installed capacity equals the national demand,” he said.
He said the company employs about 200 youths including women.
Also speaking at the launching, Kebba M. Njie, chairman of the board of directors at SRN Steels Limited, said the commissioning of the oxygen plant is another milestone in the company’s investment plans which is intended to complement the steel manufacturing that they commissioned last year.
“We made the decision to invest in an oxygen gas manufacturing plant, so that we can minimize the cost of production. Oxygen is a very important component in the manufacturing process and the oxygen supply in the market is inadequate hence the reason for investing in an oxygen plant. We would produce medical grade oxygen and industrial oxygen both for medical and industrial use. The oxygen plant has a production capacity of 500 cylinders of 70 cubic meters weight,” he explained.
He stated that there are other ventures in their investment portfolio closely related to their core operation that they want to venture soon.
“The company is currently operating under capacity due to challenges in the local scrap metal market and to tackle this challenge, we plan to expand to set up a Steel Selecting Unit,” he added.
He returned gratitude to the government and its institutions especially GIEPA and the Ministry of Trade for their support.
Trust Bank Limited is the sole partner of SRN company in The Gambia. The bank’s managing director, Njilan Senghore said the bank is impressed with the work the company is doing in the country.
“The commissioning of the oxygen plant will have a great impact on medical facilities and it means we can localize and spend less on importation,” she said. She said the Bank is pleased with the level of investment the company has embarked on so far and therefore never hesitated to finance its activities.
She urged the company to consider their social corporate responsibility in making sure Gambians benefit from their presence in the country.
“The company should ensure their employees are adequately insured as well as impact knowledge in Gambians to ensure they are able to do what the imported laborers are doing,” she added.
Madam Senghore assured the company of their continuous support to strengthen the partnership.
SRN STEELS GAMBIA LIMITED is also considering collaborating with GTTI in the revamp of the foundry facility which could be a significant component of the production line. The company would prefer the utilization of the furnace units and make it open to the use of GTTI in terms of training and attachment.
The factory, located in Kitty village, manufactures high quality steel products using state-of-the-art technology, a replica of the parent company.
