Nigerian Stock Exchange admits additional shares of Dangote Sugar Refinery

NIGERIA – Dangote Group’s sugar processing unit, Dangote Sugar Refinery Plc has listed additional 146,878,241 ordinary shares on the Nigerian Stock Exchange increasing its issued and fully paid up stocks to 12,146,878,241 ordinary shares of 50 kobo each.

According to the exchange, the additional shares arose from the Scheme of Merger between Dangote Sugar Refinery Plc (DSR) and Savannah Sugar Company Limited (SSCL).

The added 146,878,241 ordinary are in consideration for the transfer by SSCL of all its assets, liabilities and business undertakings, including real property and intellectual property rights to DSR.

Hence, these shares in accordance to a court order, shall be issued and allotted to the shareholders of SSCL in place of 162,756,968 ordinary shares held by the Scheme Shareholders in SSCL as at close of business on the terminal date, when Dangote Sugar Refinery merged with Savannah Sugar Company Limited.

DSR acquired its sister company SSCL in July in a bid to enhance production capacity and further increase its market share.

The added 146,878,241 ordinary are in consideration for the transfer by SSCL of all its assets, liabilities and business undertakings, including real property and intellectual property rights to DSR.

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.

The merger will consolidate the assets, intellectual property rights, operations, and business dealings of the SSCL into the DSR.

This will eliminate cost inefficiencies arising from duplication of resources and processes and improve efficiency through more focused management of resources.

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.

In its results for the first half of 2020 ended June 30, 2020, showed that the company’s revenue increased from N80.363 billion (US$210.65m) in the corresponding period of 2019 to N103 billion (US$269.98m), as it continued to benefit from border closure.

However, the profit of the company in H1 2020 was marginally higher than the profit in the corresponding period of 2019, as a result of higher raw material and consumables costs which rose faster than the increase in revenue, reports Naira Metrics.