Tanzanian billionaire Rostam Aziz has received the green light from Kenya to set up a cooking gas plant in Mombasa. The billionaire will build a plant that will have capacity to handle 30,000 tonnes of liquefied petroleum gas.
The project was revealed by the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (EPRA) Director-General Daniel Kiptoo. “Yes, we have already issued them with the licence to build the plant,” said Kiptoo.
The LPG facility will be built at the Special Economic Zone in Dongo Kundu, near the port of Mombasa. It was earlier estimated to cost $130 million (Sh. 16.25 billion).
Aziz is currently the owner of Taifa Gas. This will see Aziz wrestle the cooking gas market from Mombasa-based tycoon Mohamed Jaffer. It is currently estimated that up to 2.87 million households or 23.9 per cent of Kenyan households) use LPG for cooking.
Vehicle auction deals from Co-op Bank. How to bid
Taifa Gas is currently the largest LPG supply company in Tanzania. The ccompany has also been supplying LPG to Kenya’s retail segment through road transportation.
In 2021, Aziz had lamented that Kenyan authorities had gone mute on his 2017 inquiry to build an LPG plant. He had highlighted this silence as a pointer on the barriers for Tanzanian entrepreneurs seeking a presence in Kenya were facing.
