A2MP secures $300 million from Afreximbank for African minerals
A2MP, a minerals processing company controlled by the family of Indian businessman Gagan Gupta, has secured $300 million of funding from a subsidiary of the African Export-Import Bank.
The Dubai-headquartered firm will use the mix of debt and equity from Afreximbank’s Fund for Export Development in Africa to support existing projects and target acquisitions, according to A2MP’s global strategy adviser, Adjou Ait Ben Idir. A2MP has mining interests from Gabon and Cameroon to Mozambique, while owning almost 50% of FG Gold, which is building the Baomahun gold mine in Sierra Leone.
“The idea is to cover the whole value chain from exploration to exploitation to processing to trading,” Ben Idir said in an interview. A2MP’s focus is “pan-African and multi-mineral,” she said.
A2MP’s portfolio includes companies with manganese mines and an iron ore project in Gabon, as well as a bauxite venture in Cameroon. One company is already building a ferroalloy smelter in Gabon, Ben Idir said, while another is studying constructing a refinery in Cameroon that would transform bauxite into alumina, the feedstock used to make aluminum.
The leaders of African nations including Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea and Zimbabwe are pressing investors to build more processing facilities on the continent. Gabon plans to ban the export of raw manganese from 2029.
“We’d love to do it,” Ben Idir said, commenting on mineral-processing projects in Gabon. “If it’s not us, then it’ll be someone else.”
Gupta is the founder and chief executive officer of Arise Integrated and Industrial Platforms, an operator of industrial parks that’s active in more than a dozen African countries. The former Olam Group Ltd. executive’s family office controls A2MP, but is separately backing the construction of a gold mine in Mali and copper exploration in Zambia.
(By William Clowes)
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