The investment will allow Johnvents to more than double output from one of its processing plants, boosting exports, creating jobs and raising incomes for smallholder farmers.
British International Investment (BII) is providing $40.5m (€38.8m) of debt financing to the Johnvents Group, one of the largest cocoa processors in Nigeria, to support expansion of one of its processing plants, allowing improved export capabilities and creating economic opportunities for farmers.
The company supplies premium cocoa products, mainly across Africa and Europe, sourcing most of its raw cocoa beans from local Rainforest Alliance-certified co-operatives of smallholder farmers. Johnvents also works to develop a sustainable value chain, by supporting farmer education, ethical sourcing and fair pricing.
The UK’s development finance institution’s investment will support the expansion of capacity at the Premium Cocoa Products Ile-Oluji plant in Ondo State, which Johnvents acquired in 2023. The facility is set to increase production 30,000 metric tonnes per year (t/y) from the current 13,000 t/y over the next 12 to 18 months.
BII is also providing advice and expertise on governance, environmental and social considerations and risk management, as well as helping Johnvents to strengthen its sustainability and traceability programme.
Johnvents aims to achieve 100% traceable cocoa, and to have reached at least 90% certified by 2027. The firm also says its cocoa farmers’ scheme aims to take 150,000 cocoa farmers out of poverty by 2032.
Benson Adenuga, BII’s head of office and coverage director, Nigeria, told Impact Investor that the capacity increase made possible by the debt financing would have multiple social and economic benefits, given small-scale farmers would sell more beans and the plant would employ more people as a result.
“The farmer benefits, the company benefits and the country also benefits because developing processed products helps to diversify Nigeria’s economy away from its dependence on oil and gas,” he said.
Johnvents is a fully indigenous agribusiness group with seven businesses across the supply chain. BII said the partnership with Johnvents also reflected the DFI’s commitment to increasing investment in Black-owned and led business in Africa, which often face greater challenges in accessing capital than other ethnicities in the region.
Grassroots origins
The company has its origins in an informal grain trading organisation for a network of farmers in several Nigerian states, established in 2014, which then added agricultural consultancy on capacity building, financial support, and farm inputs to smallholder farmers.
More recently it has moved into wider cocoa trading and cocoa manufacturing, through the acquisition of the Ile-Oluji plant and another factory in Akure, also in Ondo State. The International Finance Corporation announced a $23.3m financing package to support expansion of the Akure plant in June 2024.
John Alamu, group managing director of Johnvents Group said the investment in the Ile-Oluji facility coupled with the partnership with BII represents a significant step towards the company’s aim of building a sustainable and globally competitive agribusiness industry in Nigeria.
Adenuga said BII planned to invest further to support the Nigerian agribusiness sector, given the social and economic benefits of increasing value-added exports of processed foods. The country suffers from a chronic shortage of processing capacity, which means many crops currently get exported raw with the gains from processing being realised elsewhere.
In March 2024, BII contributed $65m to a multi-institution financing package to support Indorama’s plans to increase fertilizer production in Nigeria. BII has also provided $15m of support to help global food ingredients firm Valency International to expand cashew processing and warehousing facilities in Nigeria.
BII also recently doubled its investment in Valency, allocating a further $15m (€14.4m) allocation to support the development of a new cashew processing facility in Côte d’Ivoire, and a new bioproducts plant to transform waste cashew shells to biochar and biofuels.
