NIGERIA – Dangote Sugar Refinery has received the green light to acquire its sister company, Savannah Sugar Company Limited (SSCL) after receiving the necessary authorization for the receipt of all the assets, liabilities and business undertakings, and property rights of SSCL.

The resolution was passed at a court-ordered meeting of the members of Dangote Sugar Refinery (DSR), the company said in a notice to the Nigeria Stock Exchange.

According to the notice, DSR is hereby authorised to receive all the assets including all tax attributes, unutilized capital allowances, tax losses, withholding tax credits and any other tax refunds available subject to the approval of the FIRS.

The company will also assume “Liabilities and business undertakings, including real property and intellectual property rights of Savannah Sugar Company Limited (“SSCL”) transferred by SSCL to the Company upon the terms and subject to the conditions set out in the Scheme of Arrangement without any further act or deed,” stated the company.

Dangote Sugar Refinery will henceforth assume all legal proceedings, claims and litigation matters pending or contemplated by or against Savannah Sugar.

In view of this acquisition, the court also ordered Dangote Sugar Refinery to issue and allot to the shareholders of Savannah sugar, 146,878,241 ordinary shares of N0.50 each in the share capital, for the 162,756,968 ordinary shares held by the Scheme Shareholders in SSCL, report Naira Metrics.

Shareholders of DSR during their Extraordinary General Meeting, which was preceded by the 2019 Annual General Meeting, voted in favour of the merger of the two companies aimed to revolutionise the sugar sub-sector of the nation’s economy.

DSR engages in refining and marketing sugar while Savannah Sugar Company Limited (SSCL) is engaged in sugar cane farming and sugar milling.

DSR with an installed capacity to produce 1.44 million metric tonnes per annum, will be leveraging on the Savannah Sugar’s sugarcane production capacity to enhance its production capacity.

Savannah Sugar has 32,000 hectares of land available for cultivation of sugar cane as well as milling capacity of 50,000 tonnes of sugar per annum and that upon the merger, further investments would be made to increase land under cultivation.

Dangote Sugar Refinery serves as an integral part of the Nigerian government’s National Sugar Development Master Plan as in 2012, it committed to becoming an integrated sugar business, serving local and export markets from integrated sugarcane plantations and factories across Nigeria, over the next 10 years.

The goal is to achieve the capacity to produce 1.5 – 2.0 million tonnes of refined sugar annually from sugarcane plantations covering more than 150,000 hectares of land across a number of sites in Nigeria.

“This will move Dangote Sugar from port-based refining to fully integrated sugar production within Nigeria, thereby helping Nigeria to achieve self-sufficiency in sugar production,” it said.

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