The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Audu Ogbeh, has said Nigeria is set to supply 130,000 tonnes of roasted cashew nuts to the Walmart Super Market chain in the United States of America. He said the 130,000 cashew is valued at $7 billion.
Chief Ogbeh said the US firm came to Nigeria to request for 130,000 tonnes of roasted cashew nuts and their demand is 130,000 tonnes of cashew nuts per annum, with a total value of $7 billion. “We are in conversations with Walmart, the biggest supermarket chain in the US. They came here and asked us to roast cashew nuts for them.
“What Nigeria currently does is ship the nuts to Vietnam, which in turn roasts and sell to the US. This year, we are going to create six cashew processing factories in Nigeria, each to be cited in Enugu, Imo, Benue, Kogi, Kwara and Oyo states. These are the cashew belts for now. These options are coming now because Nigeria is beginning to focus on non-oil export.”
Meanwhile, a recent data from the National Cashew Association of Nigeria (NCAN) shows that Nigeria exported a total of 160,000 metric tonnes of raw cashew valued at $300 million in 2016. This figure was far behind what farmers and exporters could have earned assuming there are processing factories to process cashew nuts for export.