Tycoon Adebisi Adebutu’s tile maker gets $81.9m loan

Nigerian tycoon Adebisi Adebutu’s porcelain tile company has secured an $81.9 million loan from the African Export-Import Bank to triple production at its factory outside Lagos.

Afreximbank approved the senior term loan for Veenocks Ltd., a unit of Adebutu’s investment group R28 Holdings, the Cairo-based lender said on Nov. 2. The money will fund the expansion of the company’s plant in Sagamu, in Ogun State, a project now estimated to cost $145 million. Annual capacity will rise to 9.9 million square meters of floor and wall tiles from 3.3 million.

The plant employs more than 200 people, and the expansion is expected to add about 300 direct jobs, as well as work in raw material supply, transport and distribution. The interest rate and tenor of the loan were not disclosed.

“With Afreximbank’s financing, we can now deliver the expansion phase of this project,” said Adebutu, the group president of R28 Holdings. “The facility will allow us to add value to Nigeria’s raw materials, create quality jobs and increase the supply of our porcelain tiles.”

He said the plant would reduce “Nigeria’s dependence on imported tiles,” and that the company aims “to set the global benchmark for quality in tile manufacturing and to become Africa’s first choice for porcelain tiles.”

Two years in the making

The loan follows a $2 million project preparation facility that Afreximbank and Veenocks signed in August 2024 to pay for technical, commercial, financial, legal, environmental and social studies on the project. Veenocks has repaid that money from the new loan.

“The studies financed through Afreximbank’s Project Preparation Facility have helped strengthen the project’s bankability and broaden the company’s regional growth ambitions,” said Kanayo Awani, the bank’s executive vice president for intra-African trade and export development. “Full repayment of the preparation financing ensures capital is available to support more indigenous African investors and projects.”

When the two sides signed that first agreement, the project was estimated to cost $117 million, and Afreximbank agreed to act as mandated lead arranger for the debt.

Veenocks will sell mainly in Nigeria, where demand for tiles reached about 210 million square meters in 2023, against local production of 137 million, and is expected to rise to 270 million by 2027. Over time it plans to export to Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger, Cameroon, Ghana, Mauritania and Senegal.

A lottery family’s second generation

Adebutu, the third son of Sir Kessington Adebutu, the founder of lottery operator Premier Lotto, runs R28 Holdings, a private investment group with interests in manufacturing, construction, real estate, energy, infrastructure services, aviation and retail. He joined Premier Lotto in 1990 and later became its executive director for operations and business development. He studied at Swansea University and INSEAD.

In September he took majority control of Chappal Energies, the oil company that bought Equinor ASA’s Nigerian business in a $1.2 billion deal in 2024. R28, previously a minority shareholder, put $100 million into Chappal through a rights issue and now owns 86% of the company.

His father, 91, built one of Nigeria’s best-known gaming businesses and holds large stakes in Wema Bank Plc and Vitafoam Nigeria Plc.