Presco records over $1bn investment in Nigeria in 10 years

Presco Oil Palm plc has invested over $1 billion into the Nigerian economy since the past 10 years, according to information gathered by BusinessDay. With a minimum of $100 million investment into the country yearly in the past 10 years, the firms total investment in the country has risen to over $1 billion.

According to Presco, its investment in oil palm production in Nigeria has hit over $1 billion, as the investment is to clearly demonstrate the company’s confidence and boosting oil palm production in the Nigerian economy

Pierre Vandebeeck, chairman of the company, said the investment, which includes procuring high quality state-of-the-art ‎equipment, automated steam turbines and a biogas plant for power generation, oil palm processing mills, refineries and plants and machinery, was the first-of-its-kind in West Africa.

Vandebeeck in an interview recently, said the company is going forward by building a new refinery and oil mill that would gulp another $30 million to boost oil palm production in Nigeria.

“I have not done the feasibility study yet but the cost estimate for the oil mill is about $20 million and the refinery is $10 million summing up to a $30 million investment. A hectare of new plantation is about $6000 so multiply that to know how much we are investing every year. We are not stopping. We are like a vehicle driving very fast all the time, although I do say should we slow down a bit but there are so many opportunities that come up that we do not want to miss and therefore you are more or less pushed to continue investing,” he said.

Every year, the company cultivates thousands of hectare of land on average along with initiatives in alternative electricity generation investments, oil palm processing and refining among others all keeping investments flowing into the country from firm.

Meanwhile, the company also said it had opened a new chapter in its history, through the appointment of Felix Nwabuko, its first Nigerian managing Ddrector, to guide the company to success in its goal of remaining the most innovative and reliable operator in the sector globally.

Nwabuko, with vast experience spanning about three decades, in KPMG, Siat Group, University College, London, among others, is the new man to drive the company towards its set objectives.

The company has just began a new chapter by acquiring a biotechnology company in Belgium to produce high performing planting materials to achieve greater and quality yields, the chairman said.

“We are the only company in this industry in the world that has succeeded in cloning rubber trees. We started two years ago and will be planting our first cloned rubber trees in Ivory Coast and Ghana because we believe through this system we will be increasing the rubber yields by about 30 percent per hectares by 2 tons to 3 tons, but I believe it will be more‎,” he said

For the past 10 years, Presco has being investing in what he described as a genetic block of oil palm having over 200 different crosses ‎and varieties from all over the world, he said, saying that the company will propagate and make it available to anyone willing to pay the price.

“We have the first result for this and five years after planting, we added 20,000,000 per hectares with an extraction rate of 29 percent and this means we are doubling the oil yields per hectare of what is coming now.‎ We are doing the same thing ‎for cocoa because personally I believe in three crops which are rubbber, oil palm and cocoa. We are going to produce high perfoming clones that are disease resistant, he said.

The investment, which is ‎gulping a lot of resources, is a project not only for the company but for farmers to use for growing high quality yields in their various farms across the country, he said.

‎”This is an investment that is recurrenting and gulping a lot of money. We have the best scientist working on this project. We are making this project available not for our plantations. I consider our company as a commercial entity where we have our presence in different parts of the continent, growing platforms to produce top planting materials for whoever wants to buy it,” he said.

This year, the company is aiming to achieve a profit margin of about 40 percent with a turnover of about N4 billion.

“‎We are looking at 40 percent. God willing, we are looking at a turnover of about N4 billion this year‎. For 2014, we declared a duvidend and our company’s policy is 50 percent dividends of the net profit. So, if we are making a profit of N3 billion, we will be declaring about 1.5 billion dividend to our shareholders,” he said.

The increasing terrorist action of the Boko Haram sect in the Northern Nigeria has disrupted so many business activities, but however we hope to achieve a stable and peaceful business activities in the North, he said.

“We are committed to research and development and also devote each year, more resources to this activity. Indeed, we are, together with our international partners, at the forefront in the development of improved oil palm and rubber planting materials, which aims at selecting strains adapted to our soil and weather and with increasing yield per planted hectare,” he said.