All Africa reported that the first aluminium can manufacturing facility in West Africa has opened in Agbara near Lagos and has commenced production of aluminium cans. The plant is owned and operated by GZ Industries Limited.

The plant was built with state of the art technology provided by several international can equipment manufacturing companies from all over the world with Rexam PLC as technical partner and lead provider of equipment and processes technology. Located at Agbara Industrial Estate, the facility has over 150,000 square feet of floor space and is capable of producing 600 million cans per year.

With most of their production already committed to off-takers, GZI is currently moving ahead to immediately double this capacity to 1.2 billion cans per year effectively exceeding 100% of Nigeria"s current can requirements and facilitating export to the neighboring countries.

GZI said that this expansion is expected to be completed by the second quarter of next year. The facility will then also be able to manufacture long, slim cans along with the 33cl and the 50cl beverage cans that it now produces.