| Project Detail |
An up to USD 100Mn 2-year corporate loan (the “Loan” or the “Facility”) to Sucres & Denrées SA (“Sucden SA”; the “Company”; or the “Borrower”) to finance cocoa exports through the Company’s network of cooperatives, aggregators and suppliers in Cameroon, Ghana and Nigeria (the “Project”). The Facility will be primarily used for export financing, then secondarily value chain development, focused on improving sustainable practices in the cocoa value chain and supporting farming families and communities. The transaction will support Sucden SA’s suppliers along the cocoa bean value chain development, logistics and time-to-client, hence securing a more efficient supply chain. The Facility will allow the Bank to reach local suppliers for financing as well as capacity building, and thus support the smallholder farmers. Project Objectives The implementation of this project is expected to generate strong development outcomes across multiple levels, drawing on the Company’s track record of building capacity and providing support to smallholder farmers, co-operatives and aggregators across the cocoa value chainencompassing: i) Household benefits; ii) Increased incomes of smallholder farmers;iii) Governance and fiscal effects; andiv) Private sector demonstration effects. Beneficiaries The Bank’s financing will enable Sucden SA to deepen its financial investments to the cocoa sector in Cameroon, Ghana and Nigeria. This investment will increase financing to the agriculture sector for which local banks tend to have limited appetite, thereby creating financing gaps that commodity traders such as Sucden SA play an important role to fill. The Bank’s capacity to provide a 2-year facility to enable Sucden SA finance its cocoa operations is an important component of our additionality. These investments will boost the internal management systems of Sucden SA’s suppliers to allow them to be compliant with new global regulations on cocoa exports, including the European Union Deforestation Regulation (“EU DR”). Investment will specifically focus on strengthening data collection, analysis, interpretation, and storage systems with regards to geographical data of cocoa farms and data on child labor. |
