EABL sells Ruaraka head office building for Sh675m
Beer maker East African Breweries Limited (EABL) has sold its Ruaraka-based headquarters making it the latest in a series of asset sales that have helped lift the company’s bottom line in the past couple of years.
The building has been sold to Tembo Sacco, a 2,400-member savings and credit cooperative society made up of current and former EABL staff for Sh675 million.
The society has invited its members to buy the building which is to be leased back to the brewer, with an estimated annual return of between seven and eight per cent.
Tembo Sacco, in an investment pitch seen by the Business Daily, is floating 142,300 shares at a price of Sh5,000 each — totalling Sh711 million — to finance the transaction.
Lydia Mungai, the society’s chief executive, said she expects the deal to be concluded by April next year.
ASSET SALES
“Our members approved the building’s purchase during a special general meeting on June 22. The sacco intends to pay EABL a substantial amount of money by November so that they are comfortable with the deal,” said Ms Mungai.
EABL has over the past five years been involved in a wave of asset sales, including selling off depots, go-downs, idle land and property and more recently a glass-making subsidiary.
In 2012 the company sold 32 acres of land on Nairobi’s Thika Highway to London-based private equity fund Actis for an undisclosed amount. The multibillion-shilling Garden City Mall now sits on the land.
EABL also sold the former Castle Breweries plant on Thika Highway to Kimani Rugendo, the entrepreneur who owns Kevian Kenya Limited — the company that makes the Afia juice brand — in a deal believed to have been worth Sh600 million.
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