Nigeria’s agribusiness sector holds vital attainable to force commercial expansion, create jobs and spice up export profits, however the nation’s endured reliance on uncooked commodity exports limits the price it captures from agricultural manufacturing.
On this unique interview with Nairametrics, the Staff Managing Director of Johnvents Staff, John Alamu spoke at the boundaries to scaling agriculture processing in Nigeria.
He mentioned how Johnvents Staff has expanded from farmer aggregation into cocoa processing, meals production and commodity buying and selling, with blended annual cocoa processing capability of 48,000 metric tonnes throughout its two Nigerian amenities.
Alamu additionally defined the industrial alternatives Nigeria may free up by means of processing extra agricultural produce in the community, the demanding situations dealing with the field and the corporate’s plans to extend cocoa processing capability to 60,000 metric tonnes every year by means of 2030.
Nairametrics: Let us know about Johnvents and the defining choices that reworked the industry into what it’s these days?
John Alamu: Johnvents started in 2014 with a realistic function: to lend a hand smallholder farmers get right of entry to coaching, inputs, finance, and dependable markets. In 2016, we integrated as Johnvents Consulting Restricted and was a buying and selling corporate, aggregating what farmers produced and promoting it to offtakers.
Between 2016 and 2020, we moved into large-scale buying and selling and constructed out farmer networks and aggregation hubs throughout Nigeria. That have gave us an in depth working out of the provision chain and of the place price used to be being misplaced.
The defining shift got here in 2021, after we made up our minds to prevent most effective shifting commodities and get started processing them. We got the 18,000-metric-tonne Coop Cocoa Manufacturing unit, which was Johnvents Industries Restricted, and commissioned our personal cocoa manufacturing facility in Ondo State.
We reached 5,000 tonnes processed inside six months, and that very same yr we introduced the Cocoa Farmers Empowerment Programme, with a function of attaining 150,000 farmers by means of 2030.
In 2022, we earned Rainforest Alliance certification, presented in the community packaged natural cocoa powder, started exporting from Akure to Europe and North The united states, and based our logistics arm, Haven Hauling. In 2023, we got Top class Cocoa Merchandise in Ile-Oluji, Nigeria’s oldest cocoa processor, which higher our blended annual cocoa-processing capability to 48,000 metric tonnes.
We additionally expanded our buying and selling portfolio to greater than 25 commodities and introduced Johnvents Meals. In 2024 we established Johnvents DMCC in Dubai as our global buying and selling hub and arrange Noble-Eagle Industries, broadening our presence in safe to eat oils, feed, water and seasoning. That used to be additionally the yr we was Nigeria’s greatest sesame exporter.
The thread connecting those milestones is our technique: construct from the farmer and the commodity, upload price thru processing and production, and fix African manufacturing to consumers at house and across the world.
Nairametrics: Your enterprise has expanded from agricultural commodity aggregation into cocoa processing, meals production, logistics, safe to eat oils, and different product classes. What’s the strategic rationale in the back of this diversification, and which industry segments recently give a contribution essentially the most to profit and profitability?
John Alamu: The reason is inconspicuous: we wish to personal as a lot of the price chain as we will. We’re strengthening the relationship between agricultural provide, processing, production, and markets, with a transparent focal point on expanding price addition and construction globally aggressive companies from Africa.
A industry centered most effective on aggregation is uncovered to value fluctuations and has restricted affect over what occurs additional alongside the provision chain. By means of sourcing, processing, production, shifting, and promoting merchandise, we will diversify our actions, beef up our resilience, and retain extra price in Nigeria.
Our diversification is planned: we wish to construct a hooked up agribusiness, now not a choice of unrelated companies. The style has 3 pillars: Agri & Agro-Allied, FMCG, and Logistics. The primary connects us to farmers and commodity provide, the second one turns agricultural produce into merchandise for customers and trade, and the 3rd strikes items in the course of the price chain.
Past cocoa, we take part in cashew, sesame, soybeans, legumes, safe to eat nuts, rice, and rubber. Our downstream companies produce shopper meals, safe to eat oils, animal feed, seasoning and water, and our global buying and selling presence connects us to international markets. Roughly 75% of Staff profit is related to exports.
On which segments give a contribution maximum, I’d distinguish between gross sales and profitability, as a result of a high-revenue industry too can raise greater working-capital, power, or enter prices. Cocoa processing and commodity buying and selling are the established core of the Staff, whilst FMCG and Logistics expand our profit base and create additional value-adding alternatives. Our focal point is winning expansion, money self-discipline, and the contribution each and every industry makes to the Staff as a complete.
Nairametrics: Nigeria continues to export really extensive volumes of agricultural commodities in uncooked shape, dropping alternatives to seize extra price thru home processing. How a lot is Johnvents contributing to reversing this development, and what further price, jobs and export profits may Nigeria generate if extra of its cocoa had been processed in the community?
John Alamu: We see native processing as central to the way forward for Nigerian agribusiness. Johnvents operates two cocoa-processing amenities in Akure and Ile-Oluji, with blended annual capability of 48,000 metric tonnes.
They produce cocoa liquor, butter, cake and powder, that are components for chocolate, confectionery, drinks and different merchandise, and we export those derivatives to Europe, the US and different markets.
We’re turning Nigerian beans into higher-value merchandise as an alternative of delivery them out uncooked. Processing in Nigeria assists in keeping extra commercial job, abilities and price addition right here sooner than merchandise input global markets, and around the wider Staff we make use of greater than 4,000 other folks.
The chance for Nigeria is really extensive. Within the first quarter of 2026, in line with NBS knowledge, superior-quality cocoa beans earned N596.9 billion, about 51% of all agricultural export profits, whilst herbal cocoa butter earned most effective N41.69 billion.
Business estimates recommend that processed cocoa merchandise are value two to a few instances as a lot in step with tonne as uncooked beans. Each and every tonne processed in the community subsequently earns extra in export profit, helps extra manufacturing facility, logistics and distribution jobs, and builds extra native provide chains than a tonne of beans shipped uncooked.
Nairametrics: Nigeria is grappling with meals inflation, emerging enter prices, lack of confidence in farming communities, and climate-related disruptions. Which of those demanding situations poses the best danger to the expansion of the agribusiness sector, and what sensible interventions are had to support agricultural productiveness?
John Alamu: Those demanding situations are interconnected, and their relative significance varies by means of crop and placement. For long-term productiveness, weather exchange and declining farm resilience are main considerations as a result of they have an effect on yields, high quality, and provide reliability.
Lack of confidence can save you farmers from attaining farms or markets, whilst excessive enter, power, delivery, and financing prices could make manufacturing and processing much less viable. Meals inflation is ceaselessly the results of a number of of those pressures appearing in combination.
Farmers want advanced planting fabrics, extension products and services, climate-smart practices, finance and constant markets. Provide chains want higher rural infrastructure, garage, logistics and dependable power.
Processors want a coverage and financing surroundings that helps apparatus funding and native price addition. Traceability and accountable sourcing additionally subject, as a result of global patrons an increasing number of be expecting proof of the place commodities come from and the way they’re produced.
At Johnvents Staff, our interventions are sensible. We have now educated greater than 40,000 farmers in climate-smart and just right agricultural practices, accountable sourcing, farm mapping, and traceability. We’re operating to distribute a million cocoa seedlings by means of 2027, and we’ve already dispensed greater than 300,000 cocoa seedlings since 2022.
Our paintings additionally comprises child-labour tracking and remediation programs in cocoa-growing communities, whilst our processing investments come with extra environment friendly power programs. Those steps can’t clear up each problem on my own, however they beef up the resilience and sustainability of the price chain. Govt, monetary establishments, analysis organisations, processors and farmers should paintings in combination to scale them.
Nairametrics: In spite of Nigeria’s vital agricultural attainable, the rustic nonetheless struggles to succeed in large-scale commercial processing throughout a number of commodity price chains. What are the most important boundaries combating native processors such as you from running at scale, and what wishes to switch to draw extra personal funding into agricultural processing?
John Alamu: One of the vital primary boundaries is financing. Agricultural processing is seasonal and working-capital heavy: a processor should purchase wide volumes of uncooked materials in a brief crop window and raise stock thru processing, delivery, and buyer assortment, which takes round 150 days at seasonal height. Borrowing prices had been very excessive till the new price minimize, and long-tenor naira investment stays scarce.
Different boundaries come with the associated fee and reliability of power, delivery and port logistics, foreign-exchange volatility, and constant raw-material high quality and traceability. Development a manufacturing facility on my own does now not clear up those issues. All of the chain, from farmers and aggregation to utilities, logistics, and export markets, should paintings.
Nigeria can draw in extra funding thru predictable coverage implementation, infrastructure that lowers running prices, finance fitted to agricultural seasons and commercial asset lives, more potent extension and farmer-support programs, and environment friendly export processes.
Chance-sharing and development-finance partnerships can lend a hand mobilise longer-tenor capital, and our enjoy with IFC and BII displays the price of financing blended with technical help for capability, power potency and traceability. Traders want self belief {that a} well-run plant can safe uncooked fabrics, perform competitively and achieve consumers reliably.
Nairametrics: Having a look forward to 2030, what would luck appear to be for Johnvents in relation to processing capability, home marketplace penetration, exports, farmer have an effect on, and profitability? And what’s the unmarried greatest problem that might save you the corporate from attaining the ones ambitions?
John Alamu: By means of 2030, luck for Johnvents Staff would imply turning into a more potent, extra built-in agribusiness: supporting over 150,000 cocoa farmers, increasing native processing and production, rising our shopper companies, attaining extra home and global consumers, and doing so with disciplined, sustainable profitability.
We plan to distribute a million cocoa seedlings by means of 2027 and to extend blended annual cocoa-processing capability to 60,000 metric tonnes. We additionally intention to attach extra African agricultural manufacturing to markets and seize extra price in the community.
For the industry, luck manner bettering utilisation of current belongings, making an investment the place call for justifies it, construction relied on manufacturers, strengthening traceability and keeping up the monetary self-discipline wanted to resist commodity cycles.
One overarching problem can be financing expansion competitively whilst managing the volatility and working-capital calls for of agricultural provide chains. Uncooked-material costs, power, weather, and logistics all subject, however they turn out to be particularly tricky when a industry can’t get right of entry to enough inexpensive capital on the proper time.
Our reaction is to deepen farmer relationships, support operational potency, diversify markets and merchandise, and fit funding to sustainable call for. We’re bold about 2030, however we would like resilient and winning expansion, now not expansion for its personal sake.