We, Guangzhou Sunda International Trading Co., Ltd, has always been devoted to the opening-up and development in the African market since its establishment. Until now we have become a very professional trading company for exporting to Africa, with an rapid increase by 100% annually, and for the economic power Nigeria of West Africa, we annually send salespersons there for business investigations two or three times. The investigation this time has the first stop at the economic center of Nigeria – the capital Lagos.
Conditions of Lagos’s Building Materials Market
Regarding the building materials market of Lagos - Coker Market, this market is Nigeria’s largest distributing center of building materials, and the building materials retailers of the whole country come here to take goods. If it were in China, the planning would be very orderly, yet Coker Market only has very simple and crude two-storied houses, with low and medium-grade goods laid out in the first story and high-grade product in the second. The whole market is divided into several sections, the first one is the section for ceramic and bath articles, the products ceramic bricks of various models and specifications, for example 300x300mm wearable bricks/glazed bricks, 300mmX600mm/400mmx400mm polished bricks, 200mmx300mm/150mmx150mm wall bricks etc, and there are still toilets, pedestal basins, small washbasins, bathroom mirrors, taps, and high-grade articles such as shower cubicles, massage bathtubs, anti-theft doors etc; the second section is for pipes, the products mainly include multifarious water pipes; the third section is for marbles, of course the products are mainly of marbles. All the products are mainly imported from China, the Chinese market share accounts for 50%; the second is India, its market share is 25%; there are also some Spanish, Italian and locally made products. During the investigation period, our business turnover (volume) is delightful, and only for the new customers of ordered bargains, the turnover is as high as more than 2 million USD; here mainly ceramic bricks, toilets, pedestal basins and small washbasins are involved, also much has been transacted after returning home, with the turnover also reaching 3.5 million USD.
The Eastern City Onitsha, Conditions of Onitsha
The eastern city Onitsha – Onitsha’s commerce is obviously less active than Lagos’s. Onitsha also mainly has the building materials market, there are two major building materials markets, one mainly for glass mirros, another mainly for ceramics like Coker. The market of glass mirrors have various sizes/specifications of glass mirrors laid out, major glass plates as big as 4mm/5mmx126”x84”/86”/88”, minor ones as small as 1.8mmx16”x20”,2mmx24”x36”. The market is not very big, with 4 to 5 streets only, each having a dozen of shops or so, nor the people coming and going are numerous, yet this market of glass mirrors is the most important distributing center of glass mirrors in Nigeria; Onitsha’s ceramic market, of a rather small size, mainly has various bricks, toilets, small washbasins and such low/medium grade products, without high-grade articles such as shower cubicles or massage bathtubs etc, also there are some hardware odds etc, for example iron nails, iron chains, sandwich plates etc. This market has only 60% of its products directly imported, while 80% of the volume of this 60% is imported from China, the products imported from other countries are few, the remaining 40% is wholesaled from Coker Market. Though its size is obviously smaller than Coker Market, our turnover still reaches 600 thousand USD or so.
