DekelOil Executive Director Lincoln Moor (AIM:DKL)

Dekeloil PLC

Option to Acquire Majority Interest in Cashew Co.

DekelOil Public Limited, the West African focused agricultural company, is pleased to announce it has agreed an option to acquire 58.5% of the existing issued share capital of Pearlside Holdings Ltd ("Pearlside"), an investment holding company (the "Option"). Pearlside has one wholly owned subsidiary Capro CI SA ('Capro'), a raw cashew nut ("RCN") business which is developing a large-scale 30,000tpa RCN processing project at Tiebissou in Côte d'Ivoire. Tiebissou complements DekelOil's existing projects in Côte d'Ivoire: Ayenouan, which produced 38,736 tonnes of Crude Palm Oil in 2017; and Guitry, a second 'seed to oil' palm oil project which is currently under development. 

DekelOil Executive Director Lincoln Moore said, "The Tiebissou Cashew Project would not only transform DekelOil into a multi-project, multi-commodity agricultural company focused on West Africa, but it also has the potential to be a much larger operation than Ayenouan in terms of revenues and profitability. Based on today's sale prices, processing 10,000tpa of RCNs in the first full year of operations could generate substantial revenues, which would rise considerably further once the capacity of the plant at Tiebissou has been expanded to 30,000 tpa. Combine this with our producing palm oil project at Ayenouan and there is tangible potential to rapidly scale up DekelOil's revenue profile.

"We are confident this potential will be realised. With a lack of local processing capacity and a large smallholder community, Tiebissou shares many similar characteristics to Ayenouan before we built our state-of-the-art processing operation. Tiebissou therefore represents an excellent opportunity to deploy the same collaborative model which has been so successful at Ayenouan, not just for DekelOil but also for local stakeholders and smallholders. Furthermore it was our proven track record in rolling out the vertically integrated model at Ayenouan on time and on budget that has enabled us to secure this option to acquire a majority interest in Tiebissou at no initial cost. With first production at Tiebissou expected in mid-2019, this is an exciting period for the Company and I look forward to providing further updates, as we focus on building a leading West African focused agricultural company."