The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) has agreed that Union Dicon Salt Plc will replace Cargill as the core investor in the $100m Alape Staple Crop Processing Zone in Kogi State.
This was the high point of the meeting of the Honourable Minister of Agriculture, Chief Audu Ogbeh, with the Chief Executives of UDS Plc. in Abuja at the week-end.
“I’m glad to see that a Nigerian company is taking over this very important project, and is championing the indigenous development of agribusiness,” Chief Audu Ogbeh noted.
Stressing that “we are not going to engage in policy somersault, Ogbeh, pointed that “we are carrying on with the great idea” of SCPZ “and we are adding even greater ideas.
We are carrying on as we now produce what we call the green alternative: that alternative being agriculture,” since oil and gas are “unstable sources of income.”
Chuka Mordi and Bex Nwawudu of Union Dicon Salt Plc. who met with the Minister,
thanked him for his support, in taking over the Alape project valued at $100 million, replacing Cargill, the US-based agro-industrial giant.
With this, Union Dicon plc will be cultivating Cassava on 30,000 hectares of land in Alape, Kogi State.
“It is a remarkable opportunity to develop the agribusiness space in Nigeria from a fully indigenous perspective. Union Dicon is listed in the Nigerian Stock Exchange, and it is a wholly Nigerian company,” Mordi said at the meeting.
Union Dicon Salt Plc (NSE: UNIONDICON) operates in the Nigerian Consumer Goods, and
Agro Industrial Sector, and is building the largest industrial starch processing facility in Nigeria.