KENYA – FMO, a Dutch development bank is seeking to extend a syndicated facility of US$90m working capital loan to Agri Commodities and Finance (ACF), the main trading company of Export Trading Group (ETG).
The facility having a tenor of 2.5 years, is aimed to allow ETG to have sufficient liquidity to continue its operations, maintain employment and continue its support to farmers across Africa.
“ETG plays a key role in various agricultural value chains (cashew nuts, sesame seeds, pulses etc.). In Africa, it uses its own supply chain infrastructure to source over 80% of its agricultural commodities at farm-gate and operates processing plants that create value for the local economies.
“ETG is also one of the largest importers and distributors of fertilizer in Africa, playing an important role in enhancing incomes of African farmers,” indicated FMO as reason to fund the company.
Founded in Kenya in 1967, ETG has emerged as one of Africa’s largest Agricultural Conglomerates with footprints across sub-Saharan Africa, North America, Europe, the Middle East and South East Asian countries.
Globally recognised as one of the fastest growing integrated agricultural supply chain groups, its operations include procurement, warehousing, processing and/or manufacturing of finished goods, merchandising, transporting and distributing of products and driving brand growth, with most of its footprint in Africa.
It operates in 26 African countries and manages more than 400 warehouses and over 90 processing plants worldwide.
ETC Group became an FMO client in 2019.
Recently, Finnfund, a development financer invested US$15 million in a syndicate loan to ETG alongside other investors to enable it further develop its business in Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania.
This was followed with the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) approving a US$400M global credit facility agreement for the group.
The Afreximbank’s facility is geared towards addressing major bottlenecks faced by African agricultural exporters, aggregating large amounts of produce to provide access to regional and international markets for small and medium-sized enterprises.
Liked this article? Subscribe to Food Business Africa News, our regular email newsletters with the latest news insights from Africa and the World’s food and agro industry. SUBSCRIBE HERE