Table of Contents
Cornelis Vink is buying UAC of Nigeria's entire 43% holding in DP World Logistics, the warehousing and distribution company that moves goods for manufacturers across the country.
The buyer is 22 Plus Invest Limited, part of Vink's Tropical General Investments group. UAC disclosed the agreement to the Nigerian Exchange on Sept. 24 and said it remains subject to regulatory approval. Neither side gave a price.
What Vink is buying runs 19 distribution centres in Nigeria and handles more than 660,000 tonnes of product a year, along with a fleet of dedicated trucks including refrigerated vehicles. The company was called MDS Logistics for most of its life and was built to move UAC's own merchandise before it took on outside clients.
UAC has been selling it down for years. South Africa's Imperial Logistics bought 49% in 2016, took another 8% from UAC for $2.4 million in 2019, and reached 65% in 2020. Dubai's DP World then bought Imperial outright in 2022 and renamed the Nigerian business after itself.
This sale takes UAC out altogether.
The company called it portfolio management. UAC said the divestment is part of a continuing effort to refine its investment holdings, and Fola Aiyesimoju, its group managing director, said the business had grown substantially and that TGI would be a strong long-term partner bringing deep market knowledge and a record of building companies in Nigeria.
Vink and UAC have swapped assets before, in the other direction. He founded CHI Limited, the juice and dairy maker behind Chivita and Hollandia, and sold it to Coca-Cola in 2019 for about $1 billion. UAC bought CHI from Coca-Cola and finished integrating it only months ago.
Farouk Gumel, TGI's executive vice chairman for Africa, said the purchase reflects a shared ambition with DP World to reshape trade and logistics on the continent, combining the Dubai group's global expertise with TGI's distribution network to build supply chains that strengthen regional connectivity.
The logic is that TGI already needs what the company sells. Vink's group owns more than a hundred brands across fast-moving consumer goods, agricultural inputs, industrial chemicals, home care products and pharmaceuticals, runs a rice mill in Kebbi State that is among the largest in Africa, and employs over 25,000 people across Nigeria, West Africa, India and the United Arab Emirates. All of it has to be warehoused and trucked.
Vink arrived in Lagos from the Netherlands in the 1970s and incorporated TGI in 1980. He started by importing Caprison juice, then stopped importing and began manufacturing in Nigeria, which became the model for everything that followed. About 24 companies now sit under Vinc Corporation, the entity above TGI.
He also owns a bank. TGI founded Titan Trust Bank in 2019 and used it to acquire Union Bank of Nigeria, the country's second-oldest lender, for 191 billion naira.
Ayomipo Wey, UAC's company secretary and group general counsel, signed the announcement.
The intelligence satisfies curiosity. The paid briefings satisfy strategy.
Every Monday, Elite subscribers receive an Investor Memo breaking down the deal, the structure and the positioning behind the week's most consequential African wealth story - the kind of analysis that doesn't appear anywhere else.
Twice a month, a Wealth Intelligence brief profiles a single billionaire's holdings, cash flows and expansion pipeline in detail no public source matches.
→ Executive ($25/mo): Daily newsletter + Deep-Dive Reports
→ Elite ($75/mo): Everything above + Investor Memos + Wealth Intelligence + Quarterly Analyst Briefings
Subscribe now
