Indian billionaire acquires South Africa’s Omnia for $1.4B

Solar Industries India has agreed to buy Omnia Holdings, the Johannesburg-listed explosives and fertiliser group, in an all-cash deal worth about 21.8 billion rand, or $1.4 billion.

The company announced it on Monday, Sept. 14. Solar SA Investments, its South African subsidiary, will acquire every outstanding Omnia share at 134.5 rand, a premium of 14.3% to Friday’s closing price.

Omnia shares rose as much as 7.6% on the news and were trading 4.1% higher by mid-morning in Johannesburg, giving the company a market value of about 19.8 billion rand.

It will leave the market entirely once the transaction completes. Omnia is to be delisted from both the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and A2X Markets, the alternative exchange that Capitec joined this month.

Completion is expected in early to mid-2027, subject to regulatory and competition approvals in the jurisdictions involved.

What Solar is buying is a business that touches two industries at once. Omnia makes mining explosives and chemicals through its BME division, and crop nutrition and specialised agricultural products on the other side. It reported revenue of $1.41 billion in its last financial year.

Manish Nuwal, managing director and chief executive of Solar Group, said the company had long admired Omnia for the strength of its mining and agriculture businesses, its technologies and brands, and customer relationships built over many years.

He described the purchase as an important step toward becoming a global leader in explosives and blasting, and said BME brings an international mining platform, manufacturing assets, technological leadership in electronic initiation systems, integrated ammonium nitrate production and an established presence across Africa. The combined group, he said, would create the most integrated global blasting platform.

The acquisition also takes Solar into integrated crop nutrition and biological solutions for the first time.

Solar has been building in southern Africa for sixteen years. The Nagpur-based company entered the region in 2010 with a manufacturing plant in Zambia, began operating in South Africa in 2015 through a distribution platform, and commissioned a factory at Middelburg in Mpumalanga in 2017. It bought ProBlast, which provides drilling, blasting and explosives services to open-cast mines, in 2024.

It makes industrial explosives and initiating systems for mining, infrastructure, construction, defence and space customers.