A US-listed maker of electrical wires, General Cable, has announced its entry into the Kenyan market in a move set to challenge EA Cables’ grip on the East African market.

David Green, the company’s General Manager for sales and marketing in Sub-Sahara Africa, said in an interview that the Fortune 500 company will set up distribution points in the next three months before possibly constructing a manufacturing plant. The company intends to use Nairobi as an entry point to the east African region.

“Upgrade and extension of infrastructure in the region, coupled with the recent oil and gas finds, have presented a significant case for us to start operations in East Africa,” said Mr Green. He declined to disclose the budgeted capital expenditure for the expansion. “We have already done the physical set up and we are now ready to commercialise our operations in Kenya and in the region” said Mr Green.

General Cable’s entry into the market comes at a time when East African Cables says it has acquired two acres of land to expand its operations.

READ: EA Cables buys two-acre land for new factory

EA Cables’ main market is energy firms, real estate developers and Telcos. Tom Riungu, the business development manager at General Cables, said on phone that they are also targeting government tenders in the energy sector.

The Kenyan government has already allocated around $262 million in the coming financial year to finance installation of power transmission systems by the Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (Ketraco).

Kenya Power also plans to spend around $592 million on electricity distribution and new substations in the same period an opportunity that General Cable intends to tap. The government is set to spend another $114 million in the new financial year to develop geothermal energy as part of plans to raise the country’s overall generation capacity from the current 1,664MW to 5,108MW by 2017.

The American cable maker is mainly involved in developing and distribution of copper, aluminum and fibre optic cables in energy, industrial, and communication markets. The firm has 57 manufacturing facilities located in 26 countries.

It also controls four manufacturing plants based in South Africa, Angola, Egypt and Zambia.