Meet Kamoru Yusuf And Wife, Bolanle: Kam Industries Owners, Steel Mill
In 1971, General Yakubu Gowon, then military ruler of a Nigeria recently emerged from a devastating civil war, established the National Steel Development Authority (NSDA) to harness yet another of Nigeria’s numerous natural resource blessings: an estimated five billion tonnes of iron ore reserves. Gowon had hoped that his actions would set Nigeria on the path towards becoming a present-day global steel producer and an industrial player. However, over four decades later, Nigeria’s iron ore deposits remain largely untapped, a legacy of easy oil, and the steel industry is all but non-existent. Nigeria presently imports 90 percent of the roughly six million tonnes of steel it consumes annually from countries like China and the Ukraine. The impact is felt down the value chain, increasing the price of metal goods in Nigeria, slowing the pace of industrialisation and fuelling unemployment.
Though devastating for Nigeria’s economy, this adversity was an inspiration for Alhaji Kamoru Yusuf and his wife Bolanle, the brains behind Nigeria’s first independently owned cold roll steel complex, which they are building in Illorin, the capital of Kwara State.
“The scrap material I use in making roof nail caps goes for around N50 [30 cents] per tonne in China. In Nigeria, they cost me N25,000 [$160]. I couldn’t compete successfully. I had to set up a factory in China to acquire scrap cheaply,” a smiling and now successful Alhaji Kamoru Yusuf says, reclining in his black leather office chair. His massive office overlooks the new white and blue steel plant in the large factory compound with warehouses holding rows and rows of nail-making machines. In many ways, the steel plant is his way of providing a local solution to his supply chain problems.
Alhaji Kamoru Yusuf, affectionately known as ‘Kam’, ‘Kam wire,’ or ‘Kamal’ to the locals of Kwara State, is the founder and CEO of Kam Industries, a strong contender for the title of Nigeria’s largest independently owned nail and wire-producing company. It produces different types of nails in addition to wire mesh for concrete reinforcement, binding wires and roofing sheets, as well as other building materials.
The company has five factories in Illorin, the capital of Kwara state, and a granite quarry just outside of the small city. Over a million bags of nails and 1.3 million tonnes of roofing sheets pour out of Kam’s factories to supply builders in Nigeria and West Africa. The 47-year-old, self-taught engineer and self-made multimillionaire has, with the support of his wife, turned a N10,000 advance he received on finishing a trading apprenticeship in 1987 into a $300-million industrial conglomerate. And he has done so without political connections or even a high school education. Bolanle Yusuf attributes the rise of Kam Industries to aggressive manufacturing, hard work and good old-fashioned entrepreneurship.
Kam’s trademark is a pair of black, plastic-rimmed glasses. His vision has been impaired by years of welding work – a skill he combined with what Bolanle stresses is an exceptionally brilliant imagination to design and construct several metal processing machines for producing nails – often using spare parts from trucks. After studying German designs, he would forge the bodies, purchase engines that he couldn’t produce himself, and then assemble machine after machine.
Kam’s desire to design and produce is almost compulsive. “Anytime I attend steel wire exhibitions, I go there to spy technology, check each country’s design, how they design it, and get the catalogue,” he says. “I investigate how to redesign them to work for Nigeria. I go to so many factories to study their operations. While people are running around trying to get a PhD certificate, I’m travelling round the world to get the knowledge of the masters.”
During a visit to one of the Kam Industries factory sites, situated along a dusty strip of road leading out of Illorin’s industrial zone, Kam is keen to show the very first nail filing machines he constructed almost 20 years ago, which are still in regular use. In another section, he pauses before the first of four nine-foot-deep furnaces, used for softening wire rods, placed into the ground. Kam admits the first oven – his own design – is not as elegant as the other three imported from Italy, but it is functional.
“When I began travelling abroad I visited a factory in Italy where I saw a 1,000 degrees-Celsius capacity electric furnace which cost a fortune. The electric furnace could help me expand my business from nail production to making reinforcement wire meshes, so I made a sketch of it and studied the components. When I returned to Nigeria I bought the components I could find, gave the dimension[s] of the electric furnace to makers of trucks used in transporting petrol and instructed them to roll the plate for me like a fuel tank. I bought the bricks and got a bricklayer to shape them according to the sketch. I had purchased the heating elements abroad. We also developed an electric panel to operate the furnace [as] I had observed in Italy. And it worked!” Kam made two such furnaces before finally raising the capital to import the Italian versions. He still uses the first furnace he created, while the second has been decommissioned and is kept as memorabilia. Like the Chinese he greatly admires, Kam has pursued technology duplication as his strategy for increased productivity.
Though devastating for Nigeria’s economy, this adversity was an inspiration for Alhaji Kamoru Yusuf and his wife Bolanle, the brains behind Nigeria’s first independently owned cold roll steel complex, which they are building in Illorin, the capital of Kwara State.
“The scrap material I use in making roof nail caps goes for around N50 [30 cents] per tonne in China. In Nigeria, they cost me N25,000 [$160]. I couldn’t compete successfully. I had to set up a factory in China to acquire scrap cheaply,” a smiling and now successful Alhaji Kamoru Yusuf says, reclining in his black leather office chair. His massive office overlooks the new white and blue steel plant in the large factory compound with warehouses holding rows and rows of nail-making machines. In many ways, the steel plant is his way of providing a local solution to his supply chain problems.
Alhaji Kamoru Yusuf, affectionately known as ‘Kam’, ‘Kam wire,’ or ‘Kamal’ to the locals of Kwara State, is the founder and CEO of Kam Industries, a strong contender for the title of Nigeria’s largest independently owned nail and wire-producing company. It produces different types of nails in addition to wire mesh for concrete reinforcement, binding wires and roofing sheets, as well as other building materials.
The company has five factories in Illorin, the capital of Kwara state, and a granite quarry just outside of the small city. Over a million bags of nails and 1.3 million tonnes of roofing sheets pour out of Kam’s factories to supply builders in Nigeria and West Africa. The 47-year-old, self-taught engineer and self-made multimillionaire has, with the support of his wife, turned a N10,000 advance he received on finishing a trading apprenticeship in 1987 into a $300-million industrial conglomerate. And he has done so without political connections or even a high school education. Bolanle Yusuf attributes the rise of Kam Industries to aggressive manufacturing, hard work and good old-fashioned entrepreneurship.
Kam’s trademark is a pair of black, plastic-rimmed glasses. His vision has been impaired by years of welding work – a skill he combined with what Bolanle stresses is an exceptionally brilliant imagination to design and construct several metal processing machines for producing nails – often using spare parts from trucks. After studying German designs, he would forge the bodies, purchase engines that he couldn’t produce himself, and then assemble machine after machine.
Kam’s desire to design and produce is almost compulsive. “Anytime I attend steel wire exhibitions, I go there to spy technology, check each country’s design, how they design it, and get the catalogue,” he says. “I investigate how to redesign them to work for Nigeria. I go to so many factories to study their operations. While people are running around trying to get a PhD certificate, I’m travelling round the world to get the knowledge of the masters.”
During a visit to one of the Kam Industries factory sites, situated along a dusty strip of road leading out of Illorin’s industrial zone, Kam is keen to show the very first nail filing machines he constructed almost 20 years ago, which are still in regular use. In another section, he pauses before the first of four nine-foot-deep furnaces, used for softening wire rods, placed into the ground. Kam admits the first oven – his own design – is not as elegant as the other three imported from Italy, but it is functional.
“When I began travelling abroad I visited a factory in Italy where I saw a 1,000 degrees-Celsius capacity electric furnace which cost a fortune. The electric furnace could help me expand my business from nail production to making reinforcement wire meshes, so I made a sketch of it and studied the components. When I returned to Nigeria I bought the components I could find, gave the dimension[s] of the electric furnace to makers of trucks used in transporting petrol and instructed them to roll the plate for me like a fuel tank. I bought the bricks and got a bricklayer to shape them according to the sketch. I had purchased the heating elements abroad. We also developed an electric panel to operate the furnace [as] I had observed in Italy. And it worked!” Kam made two such furnaces before finally raising the capital to import the Italian versions. He still uses the first furnace he created, while the second has been decommissioned and is kept as memorabilia. Like the Chinese he greatly admires, Kam has pursued technology duplication as his strategy for increased productivity.
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