Silvex International Ltd and Kano government are partnering to build an Agro-Industrial Park in the state.
A statement by the Chief Press Secretary to Kano state governor Mr Abba Anwar made available to newsmen on Monday said the development is in a bid to ensure the transformation of commodity trading, stimulating agricultural value chain and food system efficiency.
The proposed park, which objective is improve development of systematic agricultural value chain in various commodities in Nigeria and beyond, would be situated at Bunkure community within the Kano River Irrigation Project area.
Receiving the company team led by Silvex’s CEO, Abubakar Adam who made the investment presentation at the government house, governor Abdullahi Ganduje gave express directive to Kano Investment Promotion Agency (KANIVEST) and all other relevant government agencies to hasten the process and outline what is expected of government to incentivize the investors and ensure immediate actualization of the project.
Earlier, Silvex’s Adam said the Agro-Industrial Park project is designed to serve as a geographical cluster of independent firms grouped together to gain economy of scale by sharing infrastructure such as roads, energy, transportation, laboratory, communication and storage facilities among many other things.
According to him, the park is worth $162,000,000 and that with express directives from Kano state governor, the first phase of the project estimated at $12,000,000 would be completed within six months of inception.
“Supported by the British Foreign and Common Wealth Development Office (FCDO/UKAid) under its Links Project, the Agro-Industrial project will serve a one stop shop for agribusiness and commodity trading through value addition and strategic reserve and storage facilities where key players will have positive externalities.
“This will attract more investments and job creations, improve rural incomes and livelihoods, as well as increase internally generated revenue to government. On other hand, farmers, aggregators, processors and distributors will de-risk their businesses and solve the challenge of supply defaults and business activities will have increased profits,” added.
He also confirmed that the park, which is the first of its kind in Nigeria, will play significant role in price stabilization of essential commodities, market development and promote agricultural mechanization and technology transfer from foreign investors in the country, with robust research and development through scientific and modern equipment that would be deployed.
Silvex is a wholly indigenous rapidly growing integrated agribusiness, mining and logistics company with diverse interest in commodity production, aggregation, processing, packaging and trading working across 26 Nigerian states and seven African countries.
