One of Nigeria’s foremost conglomerates, the Stallion Group, has intensified efforts toward expanding its operations in the country’s fully integrated rice value chain.
Stallion’s efforts to increase local rice production commenced as early as 2007 when the associated challenges were more complex.
Leveraging on the policy impetus provided by the federal government through its Agricultural Transformation Agenda, the group has already established a major increase in local production to 430,000 metric tonnes per annum.
It is targeting production of 1.50 million tonnes of rice production in Nigeria through setting up more milling capacities and structured farming activities.Its investments in the rice supply chain are expected to exceed N30 billion in the coming months.
The group is producing premium varieties of rice such as the local paddy being marketed by the company under the names “Royal Stallion Shinkafa” and “Super Champion’’ which are now amongst the most popular made-in-Nigeria brands of rice. Stallion has established fully integrated agricultural operations, including world-class rice mills, at strategic locations to promote milling and paddy cultivation in the captive areas. Its activities are being a catalyst for increased local production of paddy, thereby contributing to Nigeria becoming self-sufficient in rice production.
The Stallion Group chairman, Sunil Vaswani, said, “Sensing the need for local self-sufficiency and alignment with local government’s ambitions for food security, Stallion pioneered investments into backward integration, creating a fully integrated value chain. Stallion is working tirelessly to improve farm yields and bring in sustainable and scalable growth to farmers.”Stallion’s vision is to preserve and enrich rice production in Nigeria by ensuring genetic integrity of the seed, encouraging farmers to adopt scientific agricultural practices and leveraging on world-class rice processing technologies. It also wishes to emerge as the industry benchmark for product quality and customer service.
