Prices as at September 2026 and moving. Rebuild this with your own current cement cost before you quote anybody.

When cement climbed past ten thousand naira a bag earlier this year, block producers in Kano moved nine-inch blocks from N750 to N800. Sensible response. The question worth asking is how many weeks passed between the cement increase and the block increase, because that gap is where the money went.

Where the loss actually happens

Cement dealers reprice constantly. They have to, because their own input costs move daily and their margin is thin. A block producer is different. Repricing feels risky. Customers complain. There is always a reason to wait until next month, or until the next big order is delivered, or until the increase looks permanent rather than temporary.

Every day of that waiting is a day you are selling blocks at last month’s cement price. On a yard turning out a few thousand blocks a week, a few weeks of that is real money, and it never shows up as a loss in anybody’s records. It shows up as a month that felt busy but did not pay.

Why cement keeps moving

A 50kg bag has ranged roughly between N10,200 and N15,000 across states this year. The manufacturers are fairly open about the reason. Energy runs at about 60 per cent of the cost of producing a bag, and that energy is gas, coal and diesel, mostly priced in dollars or tracking products that are.

BUA’s management described diesel to their plants going from around N930 a litre in March to nearly N1,850 within two months. When an input behaves like that, the finished product cannot hold a stable price, and neither can anything made from it.

Nigeria produces more cement than it consumes and still pays close to double the African average. That is not a supply problem you can wait out. It is structural, and it means cement volatility is a permanent feature of running a block yard, not a bad season to be endured.

What to actually do

Check your cement price weekly. Not monthly. Weekly, from your actual supplier, not from a headline.

Recalculate your cost per block the same day it moves, and change your selling price in the same week. Producers who do this stay level through cement swings. Producers who wait for a convenient moment are subsidising every customer who buys during the gap.

And know your mix ratio precisely enough to calculate that cost in the first place. A surprising number of yards cannot say how many blocks they get from a bag, because the mix is done by eye with wheelbarrows and a paint bucket of water. If you cannot answer that question, you cannot know what a cement increase costs you, and you will always be repricing late.

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