BUA Group is investing about $85 million to expand its ports and terminals facility in Port Harcourt as it prepares for a sharp increase in raw material imports to support the expansion of its food business.
The company said the project would add about 600 metres of quay frontage and enable the facility to handle more than two million tonnes of imported raw materials annually when BUA Foods completes its expansion programme next year.
BUA Group Chairman Abdul Samad Rabiu disclosed the investment during a visit to the Nigerian Ports Authority headquarters in Lagos, where he briefed the authority on the progress of the project.
Rabiu said the expansion had advanced significantly and was necessary to support the growth of BUA Foods in Port Harcourt.
“As you know, BUA Foods is operating in Port Harcourt, and BUA Foods is expanding, and by the time we are done with the expansion, next year, we will be having almost over two million tonnes of products being imported as raw materials to Port Harcourt, and for that we need a terminal, we need a facility,” he said.
The investment comes as BUA expands its operations across food and other industrial businesses. The group said the larger terminal would strengthen its logistics capacity and allow it to move raw materials more efficiently as production increases.
For companies that depend heavily on imported inputs, port and logistics infrastructure can directly affect production schedules and operating costs. Delays in moving cargo from ports can disrupt the supply of raw materials to factories, making greater control over logistics an increasingly important part of business expansion.
The Nigerian Ports Authority expects the project to increase activity at the eastern ports. The Managing Director of the NPA, Abubakar Dantsoho, said the investment could raise cargo throughput by between 13 and 14 per cent.
According to Dantsoho, the expansion would also increase revenue and strengthen the competitiveness of Nigeria’s ports, as the authority seeks to attract more private investment into port infrastructure.
The project also coincides with the NPA’s reconstruction of six berths at the Rivers Port in Port Harcourt, part of a broader effort to increase cargo-handling capacity at the eastern port.
BUA’s investment reflects the growing role private infrastructure is playing in supporting industrial expansion in Nigeria. For large companies with the financial capacity to invest, building or expanding infrastructure linked directly to their operations can provide greater control over supply chains and reduce exposure to some of the bottlenecks affecting public infrastructure.
For smaller businesses, however, such investments remain largely out of reach, leaving them more dependent on the wider transport, power and logistics systems available to them.
BUA said the expanded Port Harcourt terminal would be critical to supporting its growing operations as the company prepares for higher volumes of raw material imports next year. The NPA, meanwhile, expects the project to bring additional cargo activity to the eastern port corridor.
