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Aliko Dangote's refinery supplied roughly one in every five tonnes of jet fuel Europe imported in July. It did that with a broken heat recovery unit from the 10th of the month.
The Lagos plant delivered more than 400,000 tonnes of jet fuel to Europe last month, roughly a fifth of the 2.06 million tonnes the continent imported, the refinery said in a statement on Thursday, citing data from the commodities intelligence firm Kpler. That made it Europe's largest external supplier for a second consecutive month, ahead of the United States and Middle Eastern refiners.
What the statement does not mention is what was happening inside the plant at the time. A breakdown forced maintenance from July 10 that cut crude runs to between 350,000 and 400,000 barrels a day, down from 600,000 to 650,000 in the preceding months. Kpler had trimmed its July throughput forecast to about 450,000 barrels a day and projected a shortfall of roughly 50,000 barrels a day of jet fuel against expected output.
The 400,000 tonnes arrived anyway, enough to keep the top spot. The failed component was the flue gas steam generator, a heat recovery unit.
June was the month the refinery first displaced American suppliers, shipping about 466,000 tonnes on figures from S&P Global, and the plant was running hard to do it. Jet fuel loadings at the Lekki export terminal hit a record 550,000 tonnes that month, and crude deliveries reached an all-time high of 660,000 barrels a day, above the facility's 650,000-barrel nameplate.
Europe's appetite for alternative supply has not eased. Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman sent limited volumes in July, and disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz have prompted buyers to diversify their sourcing. The refinery has positioned itself as the beneficiary, and the volumes are consistent with that.
David Bird, the refinery's chief executive, said the plant has widened exports of diesel, gasoline and other refined products into Europe, Africa and beyond, reinforcing Nigeria's position as a net exporter of high-value fuels. Nigeria imported almost all its refined products until 2024, despite being Africa's largest crude producer.
The export performance comes weeks before Dangote takes the refinery public. The company has made a preliminary filing with Nigeria's securities regulator for an offering targeting $5 billion at an October listing, and the Johannesburg Stock Exchange said this week it hopes to bring a secondary listing to South Africa. Two months at the top of Europe's jet fuel table is the kind of operating record that sells into a book build.
The maintenance is understood to have finished in the final week of July, which means August volumes will reflect the plant's performance at full rates.
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