BUA Group has invested over US $300m in its Lafiagi Sugar Company (LASUCO). The investment is geared towards achieving Nigeria’s seolf-sufficiency in sugar production.The senior general manager, LASUCO, Abdul-Rasheed Olayiwola, said the company is an integrated milling factory that is comprised of a Sugar mill, Ethanol plant, sugar refinery and power plant that will be integrated into the national grid.
Olayiwola stated that the sugar company with 20,000 hectares of land has a processing mill capacity of 10,000 tcd from sugar cane to widely accepted white sugar, adding that the sugar refinery has a refining capacity of 220,000 metric tonnes.
He explained that BUA will have farmers, loaders, truckers and other auxiliary services providers who will be basically the locals and other Nigerians. Giving a breakdown of the Integrated sugar factory, Olayiwola said, “the Integrated factory will produce 20milion ethanol per annum from the plant, a sugar refinery of 220,000 metric tonnes, a 35 megawatt of electricity for the factory and is to be connected to the national grid for Nigerians to consume and a 10,000 tcd capacity sugar mill.”
“Other sugar refineries have 3000 tonnes of sugar cane per day and this is even brown sugar because they have no equipment to refine to white sugar but ours will be doing 10,000 metric tonnes cane per day.”
He said the company was first allocated 5000 hectares of land but after seeing the commitment of the company into the BIP, it was given an additional 15,000 hectares to make 20,000 hectares.
Also speaking, the BUA Group Head of Corporate Communication, Mr Otega Ogra, noted that BUA group is the only sugar refiner in the country building a fully integrated plantation that has an end-to-end planting process.
