Executive summary: Kribi has what heavy industry cannot build for itself; the next two years decide the rest

ES.1 The answer in brief

A steel works is a heavy-flow business with a difficult electrical load. An arc-furnace works making 1 Mtpa of long products moves about 2.5 Mt of material a year and draws an average of about 94 MW, with maximum demand of 130 to 190 MVA [S112]. It succeeds where iron units can arrive cheaply by sea, where firm high-voltage power is available at a strong connection point, where serviced and expandable land is held under a secure contract, and where customers can be reached by road, rail and coastal shipping.

Kribi already has the two attributes that only public authorities can create over decades: a deep-water port and a large, legally delimited land reserve. It is acquiring the next layer now: a 225 kV line and 225/30 kV substation, a water plant for the port platform, servicing works on new plots, a container yard expansion and a zone company with a fifteen-year, €795 million investment plan backed by the African Development Bank, the European Union and the IFC [S25][S26][S18][S30][S04][S07]. Its development clusters include "steelmaking linked to mineral exports" [S03]. What it does not yet have are the attributes that turn a first tenant into a cluster: a second power stage, a dedicated dry-bulk berth, rail, industrial gases, hazardous-waste services and a heavy-industry contractual framework.

Figure ES.1 summarises our assessment of the platform’s attributes on announced schedules, with power shown in its two announced stages.

Source: Cameroon Steel assessment based on PAK port guide, 2020 [S22]; Business in Cameroon, 12 May 2025 and 18 May 2026 [S57][S52]; PAK, 4 November 2025 [S32]; Investir au Cameroun, 4 March 2026 [S03]; PAK, 26 February 2026 [S02]; PAK, 6 August 2025 and 19 August 2026 [S25][S26]; PAK, 13 March 2025 [S27]; PAK, 4 June 2026 [S41]; EcoMatin, 11 May 2026 [S18].

ES.2 Why Kribi, and why now

Three facts make 2026 a turning point. First, the institutions are in place: the port authority has a delimited domain [S16], and a dedicated zone company with private shareholders and development-finance backing now manages the integrated zone [S02][S07]. Second, the enabling infrastructure for a first heavy tenant is under construction with dates: the 225 kV supply at the end of 2026 and the water plant in early 2027 [S25][S26]. Third, the policy frame points the same way: the national development strategy names mines, metallurgy and steelmaking as a priority sub-sector [S99], the Mining Code requires that at least 15% of mine production be made available for local transformation [S24], and the government’s committee on mining and metallurgy is preparing exports of Cameroonian steel to African markets [S45].

The regional context adds urgency. Africa’s steel use grew by about 10% in 2025 to 45 Mt while the continent imported 32.9 Mt, most of it from outside Africa [S95]. Cameroon alone imported 412,049 t of iron and steel under customs chapter 72 in 2025 [S93]. A coastal platform that can turn imported and, later, Cameroonian iron units into the steel the region builds with has a market; the question is whether the platform will be ready when investors are.

ES.3 What it means for each reader

For the authorities and KPIZ, the priority is sequence: commit the second power stage, publish the heavy-industry framework and power-quality code, and launch the zone’s strategic environmental assessment while the first tenants are still designing their plants. For investors, Kribi offers the hard attributes now and the enabling ones on a visible schedule; a first phase should be sized to what will exist at commissioning. For lenders and development partners, the shared enablers, from the second power stage to hazardous-waste services, are where public finance brings in the most private investment. For communities and civil society, a zone-level assessment of the coast’s carrying capacity, agreed before industry scales up, is the best protection of the marine park, the Lobé falls and local livelihoods.

ES.4 Twelve findings

1. Location fixes most of a steel mill’s non-metallic costs. Two of the three iron sources open to a Central African steelmaker, imported DRI or HBI and imported scrap, arrive by sea, and the third, Cameroonian ore, arrives at the same coast for export. A works of 1 Mtpa needs about 1.24 Mt a year of port-linked inbound cargo, and a first phase of 0.3 Mtpa about 351,000 t [S112]. The cheapest place to make steel in the region is beside a deep-water quay with dry-bulk handling (Chapter 1).
2. Kribi has the deepest quay in Cameroon and a record of filling new capacity. With 16 m at the quay, the port handled 12.7 Mt and 555,398 TEU in 2025, and container volumes rose by 82% in the year after a second terminal opened in May 2025 [S22][S28][S52]. Vessel waiting times were about two days at Kribi against about nine at Douala in 2025 [S54] (Chapter 2).
3. Dry bulk is the port’s missing link for heavy industry. Existing terminals can serve a first steel phase of a few hundred thousand tonnes a year. A cluster needs a dry-bulk berth with covered storage for iron units. The 125 Mt a year mineral terminal, agreed in a memorandum of understanding on 4 November 2025 and expected by PAK’s Director General in March 2026 to be completed within five to six years, should be designed with one [S32][S33][S03] (Chapter 2).
4. A dedicated zone company now holds the land. KPIZ S.A., created on 26 February 2026 by PAK, AGL, Arise IIP and Belmont Investments, is mandated to design, finance, develop, operate and maintain an integrated zone of about 4,000 ha, with a €795 million plan over fifteen years [S02][S04][S01] (Chapter 3).
5. Demand for land is twenty times what has been allocated. By mid-2025 investors had requested about 3,883 ha against 196 ha allocated under 48 occupation authorisations [S17]. The constraint is converting reserve into serviced, contracted plots, which requires KPIZ to publish its contractual framework and a tariff suited to heavy industry, without a levy on turnover [S11][S114]. As a prospective tenant, Cameroon Steel has an interest in these terms (Chapter 3).
6. The 225 kV link makes heavy industry possible; a second stage makes a cluster possible. The KPDC-port line and substation will provide about 100 MW from the end of 2026 and 330 to 400 MW later [S25]. The first stage can carry a first steel phase averaging about 36 MW; a 1 Mtpa works alone averages about 94 MW [S112]. On a steel-led path, the first stage is fully used by about 2032, so the second must be financed and scheduled now; neither its date nor its financing has been published (Chapter 4).
7. Firmness, power quality and price need rules, not just megawatts. Cameroon’s grid was about 90% hydro in 2025, 150 MW of industrial demand was unmet in October 2026, no regulated tariff exists above 10 MW, and arc furnaces disturb weak networks [S60][S61][S72]. A published power-quality code, a second high-voltage source and a long-term tariff structure are preconditions for a cluster (Chapter 4).
8. Water is abundant; treatment and hazardous waste are the gaps. Kribi receives about 2,836 mm of rain a year and a port-platform water plant is due in early 2027 [S79][S26]. Closed-loop cooling holds a mill’s make-up near 2 m³ per tonne, but no licensed route has been identified for the 10 to 20 kg of hazardous furnace dust produced per tonne of steel [S76][S112] (Chapter 5).
9. Kribi reaches its markets; rail would make it the region’s steel hinge. Six cities lie within about 300 km and the CEMAC region imports about US$500 million a year of iron and steel [S110][S94]. A 1 Mtpa works would generate about 245 truck movements a day if every flow went by road. Most of the inbound flow would stay inside the port domain, between quay and plant; about 110 to 120 loads a day would use the public road to Édéa, or about 55 to 60 if half the output ships by sea. That is the traffic the Édéa-Kribi road must carry until it is rebuilt and the June 2026 railway agreement becomes a funded line [S27][S41][S112] (Chapter 6).
10. A steel anchor creates a cluster. One 1 Mtpa works yields about 185,000 t a year of slag, scale and dust and needs about 37 million Nm³ of oxygen; Kribi already hosts a 1 Mt a year cement plant and a second is planned [S112][S35][S37]. Adjacency in the master plan, pipe and conveyor corridors and shared services decide whether those exchanges happen (Chapter 7).
11. Successful port-industrial zones built infrastructure ahead of demand and organised around anchors. Tanger Med, Jebel Ali, Jurong and Lekki share four traits: one authority for port and zone, utilities built ahead of or with the first tenants, anchor industries that pull suppliers in, and policy that pushes raw materials into local processing. Sohar and Pecém show steel organised at deep-water ports; Sohar also shows that where gas was not planned for industry, downstream growth stalled [S127] (Chapter 8).
12. Sequence is the strategy. A first steel phase can rely on infrastructure already under construction. A cluster needs, in order, a financed second power stage and power-quality code, a zone strategic environmental assessment that allocates the coast’s carrying capacity, a heavy-industry land framework, waste and gas services, and a dedicated bulk berth and rail (Chapters 9 and 10).

ES.5 What must happen, and when

The roadmap in Chapter 10 is organised in three steps, an analytical sequence rather than a plan adopted by any authority. The actions that matter most fall in the first.

Enable, 2026 to 2028. Commission the 225 kV substation with a heavy-tenant bay and published short-circuit levels; adopt a power-quality code for arc furnaces; bring the water plant into production with an industrial tariff; publish KPIZ’s heavy-industry contractual framework and tariff; launch the zone’s strategic environmental assessment and baseline monitoring; identify a licensed route for hazardous furnace dust; complete the container yard expansion; write a steel-cluster berth into the mineral-terminal design; and permit, finance and design a first melt shop and rolling mill sized to the first power stage, so that works can start in 2029.

Anchor, 2028 to 2032. Bring the first melt shop into production, with a first heat in the second half of 2030 and ramp-up in 2031 on Cameroon Steel’s planning estimate [S112]; bring the second power stage of 330 to 400 MW and a second high-voltage source into service by about 2031; bring the mineral terminal’s first stage into service within the five to six years announced in March 2026 [S03]; attract an industrial-gas supplier and a slag processor; finance the Édéa-Kribi-Lolabé-Campo railway; add a second heavy tenant, sections and downstream fabrication.

Integrate, 2032 to 2040. Make iron from Cameroonian ore at the coast through direct reduction, as the Mining Code’s local-transformation requirement intends [S24]; connect the zone by rail to Édéa and the interior; and export steel and iron units into regional and carbon-regulated markets.

ES.6 About this paper

This is the second paper in Cameroon Steel’s public series on steel in Central Africa. It examines the Kribi industrial-port zone as a location for steel and metals industries: the port, the zone and its management company, power, water and utilities, logistics corridors, cluster effects, international benchmarks, constraints and a roadmap to 2040. It is based on public sources available on 10 October 2026, listed in Annex C, and Annex D gives the data behind every figure; documents of the Port Autonome de Kribi are cited by title and date. Planning figures for a steel tenant come from the Cameroon Steel reference configuration RC-1 (planning estimate) and are labelled with their status.

Cameroon Steel is developing a steel complex at Mboro, within the zone; its foundation stone was laid on 30 December 2024 by the Prime Minister, representing the Head of State [S39]. The paper draws on the project as a worked example of a heavy-industry tenant, using public-record facts and planning estimates labelled with their status. Its first phase is planned around an arc-furnace melt shop making billets, with output flexible between rolled products (wire rod and reinforcing bar) and merchant billets for Cameroon’s existing re-rollers (Chapter 3 and White paper 04, Chapter 9). The paper is published for information and does not constitute an offer or a commitment.

Statement of interest. This paper is published by Cameroon Steel, which is developing a steelworks at Kribi. It is written to inform public debate; its analysis is independent of any commercial offer, and every figure is sourced or labelled with its status.