Royal Nuts opens US$23m cashew nut processing plant in Ivory Coast

IVORY COAST – Royal Nuts, a commodity trading & manufacturing company with headquarters in Singapore, has cut ribbon to US$23m cashew nut processing plant in Ivory Coast under its subsidiary Dorado Ivory.

The new facility with an annual processing capacity of 75,000 MT is deemed to be the first of its kind single roof processing unit fashioned with seamless online system.

Spread across 12 ha parcel of land, establishment of the new industrial site is in line with the country’s target of processing half of its total raw cashew output by 2025.

The West African country produces about 1 million tonnes of cashews a year and is third largest export commodity, generating an estimated US$ 800m in revenues in 2020 from the export of 660,000 tonnes.

Currently, only about 100,000 tonnes of cashews are processed within the country annually, with the number feared to be dwindling as the processors face stiff competition from exporters of the raw commodity.

Though the share of nuts being processed locally has increased in the last few years, in 2020 it stood at only 12%, significantly lower than countries like Mozambique and Ghana.

Ivory Coast is aiming for an installed processing capacity of 413,000 tons of nuts by 2022 against 330,000 tons a year early.  

This will be made possible as players such as Valency International Trading SARL(Valency CIV), recently received US$20m from Norfund and Finnfund to build an integrated local cashew processing hub in the country.

Valency CIV is a subsidiary of Singapore-based Valency International Pte Ltd a diversified, integrated supply chain manager in agri commodities and agri inputs with subsidiaries in 15 countries.

With the new investments, Valency CIV seeks to construct a cashew processing plant with a capacity of 45,000 tonnes per year on the outskirts of Abidjan.

Norfund expects to see the employment of a workforce of over 2000, with 25% in permanent contracts at the factory and 75% in shorter term contracts as skilled labor required annually for processing.

The Norwegian Investment Fund will follow up on this work through taking up a position as Board Observer, in collaboration with Finnfund.

The Valency Group has already established profitable trading across West Africa and cashew processing business in Nigeria, and the planned investment will be its second on the continent.

This follows similar cashew processing projects successfully executed by the group in India and Vietnam.

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Further Reading:

Ivory Coast fisheries, aquaculture industry receives US$25.M loan from African Development Bank SUCAF-CI breaks ground on US$29.8M distillery in Ivory Coast to boost local ethanol production Kineden Commodities secures US$64.8M to support sustainable cocoa trading, diversification efforts Tanzania to build four new cashew processing factories by 2025