Eviction looms for Athi River squatters as August 15 deadline nears
Business
By
Macharia Kamau
| Jul 16, 2026
The East African Portland Cement Company (EAPC) has given squatters living on its vast tracts of land in Athi River until July 28 to regularise and pay the firm by August 15 or risk eviction.
In 2023, the company made offers to the people living illegally on the land, allowing them to regularise, giving them the first right to buy the parcels of land they occupy, in a bid to settle decades-long disputes.
“Having undergone the regularisation exercise since October 17, 2023, the company wishes to notify the general public that the regularisation shall close on July 28, 2026. Those who participated in the exercise are therefore notified to pay any and all regularisation amounts by August 15, 2026 to enable us progress with the titling,” said EAPC in a statement yesterday.
“Those who shall not have paid the regularisation amount are informed and required to vacate any plots they may be occupying forthwith. All unclaimed plots shall be offered to the general public for purchase at competitive rates upon the lapse of this notice.”
In addition to settling the fights with the people occupying the land, the regularisation exercise is also expected to raise money to finance the company’s next phase of growth.
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The company has in the past said it plans to reinvest the proceeds of the sale of land to scale up its current plant’s clinker production capacity from 1,680 tonnes to 2,500 tonnes daily and eventually develop a new integrated cement plant with a capacity of 5,000 tonnes. Combined, the firm had said, the two plants producing 7,500 tonnes of clinker every day would give the company the ability to produce 15,000 tonnes of cement daily.
It plans to undertake these developments largely debt free. The firm has in the past struggled with what it said have been expensive loans, which nearly saw some of its assets auctioned as the lender tried to recover the debt.
The firm also said it plans to pay dividends to shareholders using part of the proceeds from sale of the land that it considers as idle asset.
EAPC recently resumed payment of dividends after more than a decade of dividend drought for shareholders after it returned to profitability in 2024. The firm reported a net profit of Sh1.16 billion in 2024 and further Sh5.53 billion in 2025. It paid a dividend of Sh1 per share in 2024 and increased this to Sh1.25 in 2025.
This financial turnaround and aggressive asset cleanup come following the recent shakeup in the cement maker's ownership structure.
Tanzanian firm Amsons Group in November 2025 completed acquisition of a 68.7 per cent majority stake in the cement maker, initially acquiring a 29.2 per cent stake from Holcim Group and later buying out the National Social Security Fund that held a 27 per cent shareholding in EAPC.
Amsons, which had earlier acquired Bamburi Cement, also holds an additional 12.5 per cent indirect interest through Bamburi Cement.