NIGERIA – Flour Mills of Nigeria (FMN), through its sugar milling subsidiary, Sunti Golden Sugar Estates, has launched a wholly made in Nigeria brown sugar dubbed Sunti Brown Sugar under the company’s flagship brand Golden Penny.
The launch of the new sweetener reaffirms FMN’s commitment to the National Sugar Master Plan that champions for rise in local production of sugar in pursuit of attaining self-sufficiency and curb imports.
According to the company, Sunti Brown Sugar is fully indigenous, made from sugarcane grown, harvested, and processed locally.
It is fortified with Vitamin A and provides additional nutritional benefits, creating a consumer affinity for made-in-Nigeria products.
During the launch, Boye Olusanya, the Group Managing Director of FMN, stated that continued investments in Nigeria’s sugar value chain would increase local sugar production capacity while empowering host communities.
“Currently, the sugar that is produced from locally grown sugarcane meets less than 5% of the nation’s demand.
“So, FMN’s commitment to improving the supply value chain through backward integration will immensely improve food security and reduce the over-dependence on sugar imports.
“It also creates vast employment opportunities for skilled and semi-skilled labour. Our goal is to build a vibrant sugar sector, one the economy can derive immeasurable benefits from.”
The launch of the new product comes a year after FMN acquired an additional 5,200 hectares of land in the estate in Niger state.
The upland acquisition brought the total land size of Sunti to 22,000 hectares of land, while the total land area under cane to 15,000 hectares.
FMN has long established itself as a formidable player in the sugar sector through the success of the Golden Penny pure white refined sugar.
With the Sunti brown sugar launch, FMN further reaffirms its commitment to the Nigerian Sugar Masterplan, which aims to increase the domestic production of sugar to meet the 1.7 Million Metric Tons (MMT) demand.
Devlin Hainsworth, Managing Director, Foods Division, FMN Group said, “We are building on our track record of excellence in the sugar industry. Without a doubt, the addition of Sunti Brown sugar to our product portfolio broadens our ability to meet the diverse needs of our customers.
“Sunti Brown Sugar, extracted from naturally grown sugarcanes, processed, and fortified with vitamin A, is set to restore Nigerian pride by introducing to the market a product that is entirely made, from start to finish in Nigeria.
“Additionally, it reaffirms our commitment to the millions of Nigerian families that rely on us for daily sustenance and confirms Golden Penny’s place at the heart of the family and, of course, the nation.”
The National Sugar Master Plan (NSMP) introduced in 2012 was designed to attract over US$1 billion annually in local and foreign direct investments and create an estimated 107,000 jobs over the first ten-year period while increasing production capacity.
The bulk of this investment is expected to come from private investors and mandates sugar companies to invest in sugar farming and increasingly use locally produced extracts for their refineries.
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