BUA Foods: What to know

The BUA Group is Nigeria’s privately owned conglomerate, with operations and investments across key business sectors in Africa.

Nigerian business tycoon Abdulsalam Rabiu is the chairman of BUA Group – a conglomerate with large investments in cement productions, sugar refining, and real estate.

According to the company’s website, BUA is a leading foods, infrastructure, mining and manufacturing conglomerate in Nigeria, where it is headquartered. The company can be classified into two major operations: BUA Foods and BUA Infrastructure.

BUA Foods includes brands such as flour and pasta, sugar, edible oils, and rice. While BUA Infrastructure includes: cement, real estate, port operations, and mines and steel.

BUA Foods currently has 8 ultra-modern factories that process rice, sugar, flour, and pasta. The factories sit on 20,000 hectares of arable land located in Lafiagi, Kwara State. The company also has 7 wheat storage silos with 32,000 tons storage capacity and 2,400 tons per day flour mill. It currently has 1,500,000 MTPA combine sugar production capacity, and produces 250,000 tons per annum of its total pasta production.

Sugar Plantations and Refining

The BUA Group currently operates 2 ultra-modern and automated mega sugar refineries: BUA Sugar Refinery, Lagos; and Eastern Sugar Refinery, Port Harcourt). Both refineries utilize state-of-art equipment to produce high quality and healthy sugar. They have a total installed refining capacity of 1,500,000 metric tonnes. The company also invests heavily in the sugar industry through its large-scale estates within the country to deepen local sugar production. Its sugar plantation investments include the Lafiagi Sugar Company Ltd (LASUCO) in Kwara State, which BUA acquired in 2008, and the Bassa Sugar Company in Kogi State. The conglomerate has also acquired 70,000ha of land in both locations to set up large scale sugar plantations, which will ultimately contribute to the development of Nigeria’s local sugar industry.

Oil Milling

BUA Group acquired Nigeria Oil Mills (est. 1951) in 2001. The oil mill currently has two main facilities in Kano, Nigeria Oil Mills; and in Lagos, BUA Oil Mills. The mills produce oil from groundnut and cotton seeds, as well as produce animal feeds and soap.

Rice Milling and Plantation

BUA operates a rice mill, as well as, a rice plantation in Kano State. It also operates a large out-growers Scheme which targets about 100,000 rice farmers in Kano and Jigawa States. The BUA rice mill is the largest in Nigeria, producing 200,000 tonnes per annum. It is currently being upgraded to accommodate 1 million metric tonnes per annum. The rice plantation is estimated to cover a land mass of about 10,000 hectares.