Deal #2006

Arable Farming Operations

Feronia PEK sprl is 80% owned by Feronia JCA (incorporated in the Cayman Islands, a wholly owned subsidiary of Feronia Inc). In June 2020 Feronia Inc. declared bankruptcy. Reportedly CDC invested $76.6 m. The Canadian holding company has gone bankrupt and the subsidiary’s assets are now in the hands of a Belgium-based firm called Feronia KNM, mostly owned by US-based private equity businesses. Another report says that Feronia may now be bankrupt and its Congo oil palm plantations in the hands of a new private equity player, who seems even more inept and ruthless than Feronia, but someone needs to be held to account. If "development finance" means anything, that accountability must rest with the development banks that bankrolled Feronia and the governments that are supposed to oversee them. In 2020, Gérard claimed that Strategos sold the mill and its rice operations to Bio Agro Business (BAB), a Congolese company deeply involved in the agricultural projects of President Felix Tshiseked In 2009, Unilever sold its stake in PHC’s 100,000-hectare (247,000-acre) oil palm holdings to the Canadian company Feronia, who received $150 million from European development banks to finance the venture. But after a decade of deep losses caused in part by a crash in the price of palm oil, Feronia declared bankruptcy. With assistance from the banks, in 2019 the bulk of PHR’s ownership was sold at a bargain valuation to Kuramo Capital Management (KCM), helmed and founded by Walé Adeosun, once a member of former U.S. president Barack Obama’s Advisory Council on Doing Business in Africa . The company, which received significant financing from European development bank. eronia's company reports indicate that Feronia acquired its 10,000 ha farm around Kimpese from the owners of this company, who were given a 20% share of Feronia PEK in return. Company documents also show that Kinshasa-based Feronia JCA Ltd SPRL was managed by former Unilever plantation manager Raymond Batanga and was 20% owned by Bin Karubi until at least February 2014, when the company was disbanded and fused into the larger Feronia structure. This company was thus still in operation well after the CDC Group and the African Agriculture Fund (a Mauritius-fund managed by Phatisa and owned by numerous development banks) began investing in Feronia.