View from the C Suite: Ladol head looks to circular approach in Nigeria

Amy Jadesimi has big plans. Following a run of highly successful projects with major oil and gas companies, the managing director of Ladol, an offshore free zone and logistics hub located in the bustling port of Nigeria’s largest city, Lagos, is keen to expand the business to attract other sectors and is launching plans to create a circular economy within the free zone.

“We’re going through a growth spurt with the Egina [a deep offshore project with Total] and new contracts from the oil and gas side, but we’re also going to be doing a huge launch this year on the non-oil and gas side focused on our masterplan for creating a sustainable free zone,” she says.

Ms Jadesimi also has an eye to potential stock exchange listings. “If you think of Ladol as a group, there are companies within the group that would make sense to list, particularly on the logistics side,” she says.

Pioneer status

Servicing Nigeria’s oil and gas industry is the core of Ladol’s business. Reaching first oil in December 2018 at Total’s ultra-deep-water Egina oil field 130 kilometres off the coast of Nigeria was a milestone for Ladol, as well as for the country’s domestic oil services industries. The Egina floating production storage and offloading unit is the first vessel of its kind – and among the world’s largest – to be entirely fabricated and integrated in Nigeria. Total used Ladol as its base for the project.

For fellow oil giant Shell, meanwhile, using Ladol as a base for its support services has meant savings of “40% on costs, and that is one of the main drivers”, says Ms Jadesimi. “The reason we are able to give Shell those cost savings is because our company is sustainable. This is because we have high local content.”

Ms Jadesimi believes Ladol, in partnership with producers, can play a broad role in rectifying Nigeria’s historical dependence on oil. “[We are] demonstrating how you can leverage commodity-dependent industries in countries such as Nigeria to diversify into other sectors, which is something companies such as Shell are interested in helping us with,” she says. “Oil companies don’t have the best reputation because of their track record on sustainability, but the truth is they are an excellent partner if you can show them the value they get.”

Integrating other sectors into the ecosystem is the next stage. “Processing offshore waste through our biomass plant is something we want to set up in the next three years,” says Ms Jadesimi.

Agricultural exporters are another target. “We had to build cold storage for oil and gas clients anyway, and in building this we realised there was a huge gap in the market,” she says, adding that the free zone is currently in talks with two major agricultural companies, one from India and the other from Rwanda.

Green light

Green energy engineering and manufacturing is another sector Ladol is looking to attract. “We want to attract manufacturers making green energy solutions,” says Ms Jadesimi. “We are seeing how the money and waste [commodities companies] are giving us can power these green energy solutions.”

Ladol is building electronic platforms so companies within the free zone can avoid duplicating processes and equipment.“We’re asking our clients to share facilities and equipment,” she says. “Forklifts can be shared, personnel, things like that.”

Ultimately the goal is to create a completely circular businesses ecosystem. “The output of one company will be input of another; all their waste will be used by us one way or another for energy. This is why we chose these industries that can work side by side in this way.”