Dangote Buys 4,000 More Machines, Now Owns World’s Largest Construction Equipment Fleet

Dangote Industries has bought 4,000 more pieces of construction equipment for the expansion of its Lekki refinery, taking its total fleet to 6,500 machines — making it the largest owner of construction equipment in the world.

This was revealed by the Group Vice President, Oil and Gas and Fertiliser, Devakumar Edwin, on Friday during a media tour of the refinery in Ibeju-Lekki, Lagos.

According to Edwin, the company started out with 2,563 pieces of equipment after contractors like Julius Berger admitted they didn’t have the capacity to build the refinery’s main factory structures. With the new purchase, including 330 cranes, Dangote has now overtaken everyone else in the industry.

He explained that buying the equipment outright, instead of bringing in foreign contractors, was Aliko Dangote’s decision — and it came down to cost. According to Edwin, flying in a foreign contractor’s equipment means paying to ship it in, ship it out, and cover the depreciation cost on top of everything else. Dangote decided it made more sense to just buy the machines.

He also recalled that when Julius Berger reviewed the refinery’s building plans, they turned down the main factory buildings entirely, saying they lacked the capacity. The firm ended up handling only 43 of about 127 smaller support buildings — things like canteens, control rooms and fire stations.

Edwin said Nigeria’s poor infrastructure played a big role in the decision too. He pointed back to 1998, when Dangote built the Apapa sugar refinery and there were only two large cranes in the entire country. For the Lekki project, the company brought in one of only two 5,000-tonne cranes that exist anywhere in the world, on top of the 330 cranes it bought for itself.

Much of the equipment and infrastructure built for the refinery’s first phase will now be reused for the expansion, which Edwin said will cut down on both cost and time. That existing infrastructure includes a granite quarry that can produce 10 million tonnes, 82 concrete plants, over 200 transit mixers, a private port, and housing for 50,000 workers.

He also revealed that the refinery, originally built to process 650,000 barrels of crude a day, is already running above that — currently doing about 700,000 barrels daily, more than 50,000 barrels above its design capacity.

On why Dangote chose to run the expansion through its own project company rather than hire international contractors, Edwin said the foreign firms wanted about 12.5% of the estimated $19.5 billion project cost — roughly $2.5 billion — just for design and supervision. Dangote turned it down flat.

“I said, it’s madness to go and give two and a half billion dollars to a contractor as just a fee for designing and supervising,” Edwin said.

He said Dangote’s response was simple: a reminder of the plaque on his desk that reads “Nothing is impossible.” From there, Dangote Projects Limited handled the entire process in-house — design, tendering, procurement (down to the nuts and bolts), and construction.

Edwin confirmed the Lekki refinery remains the largest single-train refinery in the world, well ahead of the next biggest at 430,000 barrels per day. It was designed so that 44% of production covers Nigeria’s needs while 56% goes to export, with 95% of what it produces being high-value fuel like petrol, diesel and jet fuel.

He added that the refinery can process both African crude and U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude, and meets the Euro 5 and Euro 6 fuel standards. Once the expansion and the company’s new 700,000 bpd refinery in Kenya are complete, Dangote’s total refining capacity will hit 2.1 million barrels per day.

Dangote turning down foreign contractors to build it all himself — bold move or unnecessary risk? 👇