Ibeto cement firm reverses merger decision, set for listing in U.S.

Ibeto Cement Company Limited has announced a historic reverse merger through its acquisition of Century Petroleum Corporation, a United States (U.S.) publicly-traded petroleum exploration and production company.A statement by the firm stated that it had acquired 70 per cent control of Century Petroleum Corporation resulting in the reverse merging of Ibeto Cement’s assets into Century Petroleum.

By this reverse merger, which is expected to be sealed and publicly presented in 90 days, Ibeto Cement will achieve the historic milestone of being the first Nigerian firm to be listed in the U.S. Stock Exchange. Dr. Cletus M. Ibeto, who had already taken over as Chairman of the Board of Directors, said: “It has been a long journey since I have been in business and none of our companies or businesses has gone public so far. In line with our collective dreams to place Nigeria in its rightful place in the comity of nations, we had to come up with a strategy to build a formidable structure for companies that will outlive me.”

He lauded stakeholders in the historic merger, including the government, shareholders, investors, and the larger Nigerian society for this landmark development, which will improve the level of actualisation of the huge cement business opportunities around Africa.

“Everybody knows that Ibeto Group has billions of dollar investments in Nigeria; but the time has come to replicate the successes we have enjoyed in Africa and globally. Century Petroleum Corporation is the vehicle for using our wealth of experience for the benefit of people within and beyond Africa.

“We will use it as a catalyst of empowerment for all Nigerians the world over as the company’s shares will be traded internationally,” he further said.Meanwhile, analysts believe that as chairman of the new global entity, Ibeto’s success record and vast experience in weathering the storms and growing businesses from scratch in developing economies will aid the actualisation of Nigeria’s potential of exporting cement to other sub-Saharan African countries.

Ibeto Cement Company Limited, located in BunduAma, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, began cement bagging operations at its bagging terminal in Port Harcourt in 2005. It is an ultra-modern bagging plant with a flat-storage capacity of 50,000 metric tonnes and a production capacity of 1,500,000 metric tonnes yearly, which translates to a production capacity of 4,000+ metric tonnes per day.

And in line with the Nigerian Backward Integration Policy (BIP) on cement and in response to the Federal Government’s call to increase local production of cement, Ibeto Cement Company Limited acquired the premier Nigeria Cement Company Limited (Nigercem), which has a plant located in Nkalagu, Ebonyi State. The strategic acquisition of Nigercem is aimed at expediting Ibeto Cement’s local production of cement by resuscitating the Nigercem plant and developing the project as a brand new dry process plant. The Company is also developing another 6,000 metric tonnes per day cement plant at Cross River State/Abia State of Nigeria.