Lafarge Cement Zimbabwe will take delivery of a construction 3D printer which will increase the construction speed of houses by 70% as building materials concern moves to provide affordable housing, an executive has said.
Lafarge Cement Zimbabwe CEO Precious Nyika told President Emmerson Mnangagwa at the commissioning of the dry mortar mix (DMX) plant that it would also produce mortar used for construction 3D Printing.
Construction 3D printing is the moulding of a structure by precisely placing volumes of material in sequential layers on top of each other, constructing from the ground up.
“We anticipate that we will receive the printer in the 3rd quarter through a subsidiary of LafargeHolcim called 14Trees and we look forward to the usual Government Support in its importation and subsequent approval for use,” Nyika said.
She said the technology would make it faster to build houses than the conventional method, enhance sustainability by using less material and can be up to 40% cheaper with developments underway.
“Literally speaking a standard house can be fully constructed in 12hrs,” she said. Zimbabwe has a housing backlog of 1.2m.
The US$2.8m DMX plant will result in output rising to 100,000 tons per annum from the current 7,000 tons. At its peak, output would rise to 150,000 tons.
The DMX project is part of LafargeHolcim group’s US$25m additional investment of its Zimbabwean subsidiary, which was announced in 2019.
The plant was designed and manufactured in Turkey and assembled in Zimbabwe. It is the largest DMX plant in Middle East and Africa, according to Nyika.
Business Times
