From a USD 250M family business to a USD 600M corporatised global player

A family-owned food commodity company headquartered in Lagos had spent ten years growing to USD 250 million, with operations across four West African countries. Then it stalled. For two consecutive years both top line and bottom line sat at roughly the USD 200 million mark.

The founders set RenB an unambiguous brief: build a five-year strategy to double revenue at a healthy profit ratio, and re-engineer every business and functional process needed to deliver it — from strategy to last-mile execution.

The diagnostic showed growth had happened by chance, not by plan. There was no strategic vision and no strategy outlook. Decision-making was centralised in a proprietary, personality-driven management style, and senior management was openly resistant to change.

Systems and process were inadequate or non-existent in most functions — manual workflows despite a running ERP of repute, no approval workflows, slow approvals, no internal controls, and ad-hoc decision support. HRD practice, succession planning and reporting protocols were thin. Acquiring quality talent willing to work across a multi-ethnic African footprint compounded a competency gap in people, process and management.

RenB re-engineered the business comprehensively rather than function by function. The strategy was built with the entire management team in the room — one-to-one sessions and workshops — so that the buy-in was earned before implementation began, not negotiated during it.

The strategy rested on five pillars: rework the business model for new geographies and business areas; expand across Africa and into Europe; secure sustainable product supply for global demand; build competency in every business and functional area; and automate all processes with real-time visibility on a single IT backbone. A micro-detailed, milestone-based plan then ran in four phases:

• Strategy and business model. A Strategy & Research Analytics Team (SRAT) was set up at corporate HQ. The value chain was consolidated into four independent verticals, each with SBUs run as profit centres, supported by a matrix reporting structure.
• Fundamentals and process correction. HRD, Finance & Accounting and Corporate Services (Internal Audit, Legal) were redefined — some re-engineered, others created from scratch. New functions for Global Marketing, Corporate Communications, Corporate Legal and Strategy were established.
• Strategy implementation. A centralised Global Business Development team of management trainees from leading Indian B-schools was inducted to open new markets, later absorbed into the operations they built. Seven countries were added in a year, alongside scaled own-production capacity across multiple countries.
• Competency building. RenB helped select a top-five global IT partner and steered a 24-month ERP re-implementation across 12 countries, automating transactions and giving leadership real-time visibility — reducing dependence on scarce manpower and embedding ERM-based risk management.

The client more than doubled the growth it had mandated. Post-implementation it grew to a USD 600 million company, expanding into four more countries across Africa and India, with hub operations in Poland and Romania and spoke operations in the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovenia — and is now on a trajectory towards a billion-dollar top line.

Profit ratio improved from the first year. Market share rose in most operating countries. Production efficiency lifted the company to one of the lowest COGS and operating cost positions in its markets, with higher contribution per commodity.

Decision-making time fell from an average of four to six days to under 24 hours across time zones, running on online workflows and consolidated corporate MIS. A Management Training and Development Program built a middle management bench from scratch — by year three staffed with premium B-school graduates carrying larger responsibilities than their peers — and put senior-team succession planning in place. It remains the most comprehensive engagement RenB has delivered.