July 14, (THEWILL) – Alhaji Kamoru Yusuf, otherwise known as Kam, Kam Wire or Kamal alongside his wife Bolanle, are the brains behind Nigeria’s first independently owned cold roll steel complex, located in Kwara State. The steel factory produces different types of nails in addition to wire mesh for concrete reinforcement, binding wires and roofing sheets, as well as other building materials. The company has five factories in Ilorin, the Kwara state capital and a granite quarry just outside the city.
Over a million bags of nails and 1.3 million tonnes of roofing sheets pour out of Kam’s factories to supply builders in Nigeria and West Africa. His steel plant called Kam Industries with warehouses holding rows and rows of nail-making machines is in many ways his own way of providing a local solution to his supply chain problems.
But how did his business journey start? Kam left his uncle under who he was an apprentice in 1987 with a meagre N10,000, mainly because of his uncle’s unwillingness to let him go. Unperturbed, Kam travelled to Lagos to acquire goods for his new business. He met an Igbo trader and friend who gave him N100,000 when he heard Kam’s story.
A few years later, Kam received a major breakthrough in the form of a credit facility worth N500,000 from Oscar James, a foreigner who was a wire rod wholesaler and nail producer in Kwara, which he used to purchase wire rods for making nails. He made N200,000 monthly from the loan and he bought his first house and.
