Meet Tolaram Group consolidating Africa’s footprint

Tolaram Group is set to acquire Diageo’s majority stake in Guinness Nigeria, for the continued production of the Guinness brand, and its locally manufactured Diageo ready-to-drink and mainstream spirits brands.

With a five-decade presence in Africa, Tolaram Group is one of the continent’s largest consumer packaged goods companies and has forged joint venture partnerships with several leading consumer multinational companies.

The Singaporean company, which began as a single retail shop in Indonesia, and spans Asia, Africa and Europe, is employing over 20,000 people and reaching over one billion consumers.

Tolaram Group began exporting instant noodles manufactured by Indofoods of the Salim Group of Indonesia and Maggi of Nestlé brought by Indofood to Nigeria.

The group then absorbed the haulage business of Blackwood Hodge integrating it with its Indomie enterprise to deliver supplies to wholesalers.

The Group also entered several ventures with global brands like Arla Group to market and distribute Dano products in Nigeria and Cadbury Nigeria Plc. to market and promote Bournvita products.

Read also: Tolaram splashes over N100bn for Diageo’s 58.02% stake in Guinness

The venture between its Multipro brand and Kellogg’s Corporation produces and markets Kellogg’s food products in Nigeria.

Some of Tolaram’s joint ventures include Arla Foods, which packages and distributes Dano milk in Nigeria, Dufil Prima Foods, the producer and distributor of Indomie, Mimee, and Minimie instant noodles, Minimie pasta, Minimie chinchin, Power pasta, Power oil, Emperor oil, Pure Flour and Semolina.

Kellogs Tolaram also developed snacks and cereals for the African market, and noodles for the rest of Africa.

Other joint ventures include Colgate Tolaram, which invested in Hypo homecare products, and Lucky Fibre, which started by producing Nobel Carpet and moved on to producing Lush Hair in 2017.

The Group is also set to launch the Lagos Free Zone, to host over 100 businesses, and a community of 500 people to work and live.

They also ventured into the Lekki Port, Nigeria’s largest private infrastructure investment, in partnership with the China Harbour Engineering Company, to impact the economy by $361 billion over 45 years.