Nigerian Agribusiness Firm Raises N10bn, Builds Four Factories to End Raw Export Era

• Targets stock exchange listing, says value-addition can increase revenue by 200%

Mary Nnah

Nigerian agribusiness firm, Cardinal Torch Company Limited, has raised N10 billion from the capital market and is building four processing plants in Ogun and Lagos states as it moves away from raw commodity exports to value-added manufacturing.

The announcement was made at an exclusive media parley hosted by the company in Victoria Island, Lagos, recently. The meeting was attended by members of the company’s management board, including Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Mr. David Oladunjoye Olurin; Executive Director, Operations and Logistics, Mr. Bamitale Akindele; Chief Technical Officer, Emmanuel Mshelia; and Head of Business Development and Commercial, Ndutimobong Sunday.

Speaking at the event, Olurin said the company, founded in 2020, had spent six years exporting cocoa, cashew, sesame, and soya in raw form, but was now entering a new phase of processing.

He said the company already had ready-to-eat cashews in supermarkets and was exporting to the UK, UAE and the Arab Gulf.

Olurin stated, “We are creating a legacy organisation that will live after us. Listing makes the interest of the company public and protects it.”

He disclosed that the company had successfully issued a N10 billion Commercial Paper, Series 1, which was fully subscribed and was now listed on the Nigerian Exchange Group.

He said the company deliberately did not take more than it asked for, despite being oversubscribed, and that Series 2 will follow once a clear roadmap was in place.

He added that the long-term goal was to list Cardinal Torch on the Nigerian, London or New York Stock Exchanges to ensure sustainability beyond the founders.

Giving details of the projects, Mshelia said the company was building a 10-ton per day cashew processing plant in Shagamu with a daily output of 2.5 tons of white kernels.

The plant will also extract cashew nut shell liquid for industrial use and use cashew shells to power boilers.

He said the next phase was a 250-ton per day soybean plant to produce crude and refined soya oil, meal and lecithin in order to bridge Nigeria’s supply gap, followed by a 40-ton per day cocoa plant in Ogun to process cocoa into powder, liquor, butter, cake, and, later, chocolate bars.

He said the company was also setting up an FMCG plant in the Lagos Free Trade Zone for pasta, spaghetti, noodles, flour, semolina and carbonated drinks.

Mshelia stated that Nigeria produced between 280,000 and 350,000 metric tons of cashew annually, but more than 80 per cent was exported raw to India and Vietnam.

He said processing locally could increase monetary value by as much as 200 per cent.

Equally speaking, Sunday said the company had instituted strong governance and risk management structures ahead of raising public funds.

She said Cardinal Torch was listed on ICE to hedge commodity prices and was working to comply with the EU Deforestation Regulation to maintain access to international markets.

Akindele added that all the factories will be certified to BRCGS and ISO standards.

The executives said the investments aligned with the federal government’s agenda for non-oil revenue diversification and job creation in line with UN SDG 8 on decent work and economic growth.