Listed agribusiness firm, Sasini Plc, is looking to close an acquisition or joint venture arrangement within the next 12 months as part of a plan to grow its footprint in Africa.
Sasini Plc will be leaning on its relatively strong cash position to seal a deal, having closed the six months ended March 2025 with Sh763.4 million in cash and cash equivalents, despite a Sh113.1million loss on higher costs and a 1.1 percent decline in turnover to Sh2.9 billion.
In 2024, Sasini Plc did not pay a dividend to shareholders, unlike the previous year’s Sh1.50 per share-- a pointer to a deliberate quest to preserve cash.
The planned acquisition and or joint venture arrangement is targeted at helping the business to limit the risks of operations concentrated in one location. The company presently fully operates in Kenya.
It is also designed to add to the group’s portfolio of crops and diversify away from the present reliance on macadamia, avocado, coffee, and tea.
Sasini targets to embrace cashew nut production as part of its diversified crop range.
“Part of growing is expanding our geography beyond Kenya. Currently, all our four crops are grown in Kenya, and we are about to launch crop growing within the region as well, and are looking at opportunities as far as the Western and Southern parts of the continent (Africa),” Sasini Plc’s Group Managing Director, Martin Ochieng’, said.
“We have looked at some opportunities and have been actively seeking to drive the top-line, drive our size, and drive profitability. We launched this strategy in October 2023. We have had three very good opportunities on our table and said bye to one because of a disconnect in value at some stage of the discussions. We came very close to sealing one in our tea business last year, and there are a couple on the table as we speak”, he added.
If actualised, Sasini Plc will be joining Sri Lanka’s Brown, which acquired Lipton Tea Estates in Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania in May 2024, in driving agribusiness-focused mergers and acquisitions activity in Africa.
Sasini Plc’s plans for acquisition and/or joint venture come at a time when the business has taken a hit from the escalating tensions in the Middle East, which have disrupted its products’ access to key destination markets.
“The Middle East issue has been with us since early 2024, and the Suez Canal was closed around early last year, which is the start of our Macadamia and Avocado business. Our Avocado is exported to the Netherlands, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom through the Suez Canal, and it takes us 20 days from our ship leaving Mombasa to the market in Rotterdam,” Mr Ochieng said.
“When that got closed, we had to re-route through Cape Town and Lagos, it now took, 60 days and not 20. For a perishable product like avocado, we registered some losses at sea as a result”, he added.
Sasini Plc’s macadamia and avocado businesses operate from Export Processing Zones. In 2024, the company’s Macadamia business shipped 15 containers of kernels at Sh1,091 per kilogram compared to Sh1,394 per kilogramme in 2023.
The Avocado business shipped 71 containers under a fixed price regime of Sh887 per carton compared to Sh794 per carton a year earlier.
