The Pembani Remgro Infrastructure Fund and The Carlyle Group are to make a strategic minority investment of USD210m in Export Trading Group (ETG), an African agricultural commodities supply chain manager.
This is the first investment by Carlyle’s Sub-Saharan Africa Fund and the Pembani Remgro Infrastructure Fund.
Standard Chartered’s Africa Private Equity division (SCPE), the first private equity investor in ETG, is increasing its investment from January 2012 and ETG’s founders have also subscribed for additional equity. The transaction is expected to close in November 2012.
Marlon Chigwende, managing director and co-head of the Carlyle Sub-Saharan Africa Fund, says: “This is a remarkable opportunity to invest in a business with a proven model that is highly scalable, has delivered impressive financial performance and has tremendous development impact on Africa and its economies. Carlyle has a strong track record of helping companies in emerging markets become highly competitive, global companies. We look forward to accelerating ETG’s growth, building value for its shareholders and supporting African smallholder farmers.”
Herc van Wyk, chief executive of Pembani Remgro Infrastructure Managers, says: “ETG offers a unique combination of strong management and access to both the agriculture supply chain in Africa as well as key markets in China and India. We look forward to supporting the expansion of the company’s supply chain footprint and believe that it offers an exciting growth opportunity.”
Founded in 1967, ETG owns and manages a vertically-integrated agriculture supply chain with operations in procurement, processing, warehousing, transportation, distribution and merchandising. ETG has more than 7,000 employees across 30 African countries and operates 26 processing plants and 600 warehouses. ETG connects African smallholder farmers to consumers around the world by procuring, processing and distributing agricultural commodities including maize, pulses, wheat, rice, cashew nuts, soya, fertilizer, sugar, coffee and tea.
Ketan Patel, managing director of ETG, says: “We are excited to partner with The Carlyle Group and Pembani Remgro and extend our relationship with Standard Chartered Private Equity. The new capital will allow us to expand operations across Sub-Saharan Africa, India, China and South-East Asia and create new markets for African smallholder farmers.”
