Agreement also reached with Nigeria's Federal Roads Maintenance Agency to jointly produce road repair materials locally

 

STANDAGE Co., Ltd. (Minato-ku, Tokyo; President and CEO: Adachi Akinori; hereinafter referred to as Standage), which develops and provides a digital trade platform, and IKEE Co., Ltd. (Matsuyama City, Ehime Prefecture; CEO: Nishiyama Shu; hereinafter referred to as IKEE), whose main business is road paving and which also engages in asphalt mixture manufacturing, building material sales, and technical testing, held an on-site seminar and demonstration experiment in Nigeria in February 2024 for a joint project on the use of road maintenance and repair materials in West Africa.
The demonstration was conducted in the presence of the Nigerian Federal Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA), which confirmed the usefulness of IKEE's road repair materials and agreed to cooperate and form a technical partnership for local production. The aim is to have the materials spread across the country in 10 years.

 

Background

Standage, together with IKEE, a company whose main business is road paving and which also engages in asphalt mixture manufacturing, building material sales, and technical testing, has been working on a project to investigate the feasibility of timely road maintenance and repair in West Africa (Ghana, Nigeria) and the manufacture of road maintenance and repair materials [Excel Patch], as a recipient of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry's FY2022 supplementary budget FS subsidy for addressing local social issues.

 

◇ Regarding the collaboration between IKEA and Standage regarding this project,Here

 

While approximately 80% of roads in Japan are paved, in Africa the figure is only about 20%.

Even when roads are paved with asphalt, holes called "potholes" can be found in many places due to temperature, climate, and insufficient maintenance, making road maintenance and repair a challenge in Africa.

 

To address these issues, we held a joint seminar with local road maintenance authorities in the Nigerian cities of Lagos and Abuja, and conducted a demonstration of road repair using IKEE's products.

 

■ Implementation details

①Joint seminar with the Federal Roads Maintenance Authority of Nigeria (FERMA)

In order to strengthen collaboration with FERMA and local companies in Nigeria, IKEE, Standage and FERMA held a joint seminar.

The meeting was attended by approximately 30 people including FERMA's directors, R&D managers and other local engineering staff, as well as First Secretary Masashi Kato from the Embassy of Japan in Nigeria.

At the seminar, a question and answer session was held regarding IKEE's road repair material "Excel Patch", its advantages over existing products, how to use it, and how it is manufactured. After the seminar ended, an agreement was reached between FERMA, IKEE, and Standage to jointly manufacture and develop Excel Patch at a local asphalt factory owned by FERMA.

 

② Demonstration experiment on Nigerian roads

The day after the seminar, a demonstration experiment was conducted on a road in Abuja State designated by FERMA to repair potholes using Excelpatch.

To confirm that road repairs can be carried out without any problems even during the rainy season, a large amount of water was poured into the potholes before Excel Patch was applied, confirming that the repairs could be carried out without any problems.

In addition, the Excel Patch used in this study was produced in a simplified manner, with all ingredients except for the emulsion sourced locally in Nigeria, and we were able to confirm that the Excel Patch produced locally in Nigeria is useful and functional.

 

■Towards the future

Through this demonstration, we were able to obtain an agreement with each plant to cooperate and form a technical partnership for the local production of Excelpatch.

Going forward, we expect to place orders for Excel Patch in Nigeria, while also advancing discussions toward joint manufacturing, with the aim of having IKEE's road repair materials penetrate the entire country of Nigeria within the next 10 years.