From shopping bags to Africa's largest food-grade rPET plant: the Polysmart story

On 29 October 2026, a member of the Naija Enterprise team stood at KM 53 on the Lagos–Ibadan Expressway in Ileke Town, Mowe, as Polysmart Packaging Limited commissioned Phase 1 of its expanded food-grade recycling plant. The company says the $60 million facility is the largest of its kind in Africa. To understand how a Nigerian company got there, you have to go back thirteen years to a much smaller factory in Ota. ## The founder Wasiu Balogun did not come into manufacturing from a factory floor. He is a chartered accountant with an accounting degree from the University of Lagos. He spent more than twelve years in banking in Nigeria and the United Kingdom, working in treasury, funds transfer and international trade, and later attended leadership programmes at INSEAD and Harvard Business School. That background in money and trade shows clearly in how he later financed the business. ## Starting small in Ota Polysmart Packaging began operating in January 2013 in Ota, Ogun State. Its first business was ordinary and practical. It made flexible packaging, mainly shopping bags, using raw material recycled within its own factory. According to his speaker profile, Balogun grew it into one of Nigeria's top ten packaging companies within seven years. Recycling was part of the business from the very start, and that early habit later became the company's main line of work. Over time Polysmart became a group of three linked companies. Polysmart Packaging is the manufacturing arm. Switch Recycling Innovations, founded in 2022, collects the waste that feeds everything else. Crystal Polymers is the recycling arm, producing rPET, HDPE, LLDPE and PP on equipment from makers such as Sorema and Tomra. ## The first food-grade line In 2022 the group began producing food-grade recycled PET, the kind of plastic that can safely go back into drinks bottles. The company used European technology approved by the US FDA and EFSA, and started at a capacity of about 500 tonnes a month. A Dubai partner, Shad Polymers, handled international distribution. That first food-grade line was paid for with a $12 million facility from the Central Bank of Nigeria, and by 2024 it was running at high utilisation. Polysmart then won buyers such as Manuchar of Belgium, Rite Foods, and a leading global soft-drink brand. ## Machines in the rain The path was not smooth. In February 2022 the Ogun State House of Assembly heard a petition from Polysmart about its new site at Ileke, in Obafemi Owode Local Government. The company held a registered Certificate of Occupancy signed by the governor. Even so, a land dispute had stalled its building approval. The committee heard that Polysmart had already invested about ₦4 billion of a planned ₦25 billion, much of it borrowed from financial institutions. It had imported heavy equipment from Austria and Italy and paid about ₦250 million in customs duty, yet the machines were sitting out in the sun and rain. The Assembly directed the ministry to issue the approval. Any builder in Nigeria will recognise that kind of delay. It is also a good reason to secure land and approvals before the containers arrive. ## Raising the money for scale As the plant grew, so did the funding. In March 2026 Verdant IMAP advised Polysmart on a $5 million strategic equity investment from an African-focused private equity investor. In February 2026, under a ₦20 billion programme, Polysmart SPV raised ₦13 billion through a non-interest (Shariah-compliant) commercial paper, against an initial ₦10 billion offer, which made it 30 percent oversubscribed. The paper ran for 270 and 363 days at profit rates of 23.25 and 24.10 percent, and the money went to working capital and the supply chain. Investors were reassured partly because the company had already fully repaid its earlier Series 1 and 2 papers. ## The Mowe plant At full capacity, the Mowe facility can process up to 100,000 tonnes of used PET bottles a year, about 6.5 billion bottles. From that it will produce 60,000 tonnes of food-grade rPET and 20,000 tonnes of other recycled plastics, using systems from EREMA, SOREMA and TOMRA. Polysmart expects about 1,000 direct jobs and more than 50,000 indirect ones across collection, aggregation and transport. Bottles come in through 25 aggregation centres in eight states, and the company plans 250 more across all 36 states within two years. It estimates that Nigeria uses about 600,000 tonnes of virgin PET a year, and that the plant could save about $72 million a year in foreign exchange. The timing matters. Nigeria's National Environmental (Plastic Waste Control) Regulations 2026 require PET packaging to contain locally sourced food-grade recycled PET, at 25 percent from January 2028 and 50 percent from January 2030. Waste PET was also added to the export prohibition list in April 2026. Polysmart is therefore building just as local demand for rPET is being written into law. Ahead of the commissioning, Balogun said: "When we started this journey in 2013, many people told us that world-class, food-grade recycling could not be built in Nigeria. Today, with deep gratitude, we can say that it has been built here by Nigerians, for Nigeria and for Africa." ## What builders can take from it For anyone in the diaspora thinking about building in Nigeria, Polysmart offers a pattern rather than a shortcut. It started with a modest product that made money and ran it for years before taking on the complex part. It kept its books clean enough to borrow from the central bank, attract private equity and return to the capital market. It signed real buyers before scaling. It also learned the hard way that land title and approvals have to be settled before the machines arrive. Thirteen years after starting in Ota, that patience has built one of the country's most important recycling plants. See Polysmart's listing on Naija Enterprise: [Polysmart Packaging Limited](https://naijaenterprise.com/directory/cmvuoy0u40000hrcoo7m9zdnm) --- ### Sources - Vanguard, 2026: https://www.vanguardngr.com/2026/10/polysmart-facility-to-process-100000-tonnes-of-post-consumer-pet-bottles-create-jobs-save-nigeria-72m/ - BusinessDay, $60m plant: https://businessday.ng/climate-and-environment/article/polysmart-opens-60m-plant-targets-72m-annual-forex-savings-for-nigeria/ - Independent: https://independent.ng/polysmart-to-unveil-africas-largest-food-grade-rpet-recycling-plant-oct-29/ - BusinessDay, ₦13bn commercial paper: https://businessday.ng/companies/article/polysmart-raises-n13bn-in-oversubscribed-commercial-paper-to-deepen-green-manufacturing-push/ - Verdant Capital, equity raise: https://verdant-cap.com/verdant-imap-advises-polysmart-on-a-strategic-equity-raise/ - Verdant Capital, CBN facility and customers: https://verdant-cap.com/polysmart-grows-its-production-capacity-and-customer-footprint/ - AFSIC speaker profile: https://www.afsic.net/speaker/wasiu-balogun-2024-speaker/ - PETplanet, 2023: https://petpla.net/2023/07/31/rpet-made-in-west-africa-and-distributed-from-dubai-uae/ - Oasis Magazine, Feb 2022: https://oasismagazine.com.ng/2022/02/ogun-assembly-directs-physical-planning-ministry-to-issue-polysmart-title-documents-within-five-days/ - Polysmart Group on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/polysmartgroup - Plastic Waste Control Regulations 2026: https://faolex.fao.org/docs/pdf/nig246632.pdf - 2026 Fiscal Policy (rPET export ban): https://strenandblan.com/storage/2026/04/Tax-International-Alert.pdf