LagosAkureIllorinAbuaKadunaKanoAbujaMakurdl
NIGERIA
In 1989 Nigeria was the launchpad for Olam’s global business endeavours, and we have featured prominently in the country’s economy ever since. With an initial focus on the procurement of primary commodities like cashews, cocoa and sheanut, we gradually refined our operational scope and expanded operations into 3 major business streams, namely exports, imports, and branded packaged food products.

Today, we have approximately 3,500 staff spread throughout the country, engaged in helping us manage of our value chain activities of origination, processing, marketing and distribution..

With offices and operational units across all geopolitical zones of the Nigerian Federation, Olam has a wide and growing network of farmers, suppliers, wholesalers, local buying agents (LBAs), customers and service providers. Today, these networks encompass approximately 500,000 farmers and have created tens of thousands of jobs in indirect employment.

Principal business activities in Nigeria include:

Sourcing and procurement, grading, processing and export of agricultural products such as cocoa, cashew, sesame and cotton
Local farming, importation, distribution and milling of rice
Wheat milling with group company Crown Flour Mills
Biscuits, candy and confectionery with OK Foods Ltd
Noodles with Olam Sanyo
Breakfast cereals,Juice and beverages with Ranona Nigeria Ltd
Culinary ingredients with Caraway Foods Ltd
In 2013, we invested over 19 billion Naira in a 10,000 hectare farm with integrated mill which directly employs 950 people from the surrounding communities, producing 36,000 metric tonnes of rice for the Nigerian markets (Mama’s Pride and Mama’s Choice brands). The farm also supports an ‘outgrower programme’ whereby surrounding rice-growing communities are supported by the Olam farm with training, pre-finance, fertiliser and seeds in order to improve their paddy yields. Currently 3,000 farmers are engaged in the programme, with a target of 16,000 by 2018. This investment is specifically in line with the Government’s Agricultural Transformation Agenda to produce rice for the domestic market thereby boosting self-sufficiency. In 2013, it was internationally recognised by The Rockefeller Foundation as a catalytic innovation’ in African Agriculture’.

Investments in recent years, in addition to the rice farm, include:

Pioneering domestic sesame hulling and sesame exports. Olam was the first entrant into the Japanese import market in 1995, and has invested in state of the art processing facilities in Lagos and Ogun states, which employ close to 1000 workers;
Investing in the development of a state of the art cocoa processing facility in Akure, which employs 500 workers
Developing a cotton ginnery in Zaria Kaduna state with an annual capacity for 30,000 metric tonnes of lint.