May 22, 2013
Lebanese farmland firm to invest US$800 million in Sudan feed mill
Lebanese farmland investor GLB Invest plans to invest up to US$800 million in a feed mill in Sudan, its president said on May 21.
Firas Badra, president of Beirut-based GLB Invest, said the firm had leased 78,000 hectares of land 130 kilometres north of Khartoum, to produce and export 40,000 tonnes annually of animal feed to Saudi Arabia.
"We are starting with 40,000 tonnes for the time being and the project will have a maximum capacity of 750,000 tonnes by 2019," Badra said on the sidelines of an Arab food investment conference in the Sudanese capital.
"Next year we are going to reach 250,000 tonnes," he said. "Saudi Arabia is a market of four million tonnes."
GLB had so far spent US$200 million in Sudan and would increase investment up to between US$750 million and US$800 million by 2019, he said.
As a second project, GLB planned to plant 200,000 sun flower seeds which would be crushed to make sun flower oil to be sold inside Sudan, and exported to neighbouring countries.
He said the investment climate in Sudan was good despite central bank restrictions on repatriating profits in hard currency, a common complaint from foreign investors.
"We can find solutions for that," he said.
Arab investors have launched farmland and livestock projects in the vast African country Sudan, prized for its fertile soil and easy access to irrigation water from the Nile, to help arid Gulf countries secure food supplies.
The Sudanese pound has more than halved in value since South Sudan''s secession in 2011 deprived the country of most of the oil production - the country''s main source of revenue.