Antwerp-headquartered chemical distributor Manuchar is taking its partnership with lubricant additives specialist Afton Chemical into East Africa, in line with the M&A and Procurement pillars of its new strategy.
In 2025, Manuchar marked 40 years since it started as a small Belgian trading company and used the milestone to set out where it is heading next: Thrive 2030. The strategy “positions the Manuchar Group for sustainable growth in a changing world,” explains Manuchar Group CEO Laurent Pasqualini in the group’s 2025 integrated report, elaborating:
“Thrive 2030 focuses on strengthening our core supply chain capabilities while accelerating innovation, digitalisation, and ESG-linked initiatives across our company. It encourages each of us to look beyond short-term goals and to build long-term, responsible impact with our customers, suppliers and communities.”
The strategy's five pillars are commercial excellence, operational excellence, financial excellence, procurement, and M&A, prioritising acquisitions and partnerships alongside some of Manuchar’s most important business growth drivers.
This appetite dates back to a change in ownership in 2022, when an affiliate of Lone Star Funds agreed to become Manuchar’s majority shareholder with about 80 percent, while management kept around 20 percent. The deal also marked the exit of Belgian investment group Ackermans & van Haaren – advised by Rothschild & Co – which had held 30 percent since 2007 alongside the Maas family and management.
At the time, Manuchar was explicit about what the new owner would make possible. “We intend to take a leading role in the consolidation of the chemical distribution landscape in emerging markets,” the 2025 integrated report read, describing Lone Star as a partner “which will provide the necessary support and capital structure to realise our ambitions for the future.”
The 2025 figures show how much of that growth already comes from deals. Manuchar reported revenue of $1.44 billion, up 19 percent on 2024, and adjusted EBITDA up 17 percent. Volumes rose 11 percent, but only three percentage points of that was organic: the remainder “reflects the acquisition of Proquiel Quimicos in Chile” (in August 2024), according to the report. Before Chile came Brazil, where Manuchar acquired Cosmoquímica and Cosmolog in 2022. As a result, Brazil is now its largest country by headcount, with 790 of its approximately 3,000 employees.
Expanding into South and East Africa
This year (2026), in addition to Latin America, where Manuchar signed exclusive partnerships with Sensient (Honduras, Brazil and Peru) in February and Repsol (Brazil, Mexico and Ecuador) in May, Manuchar has its sights set on expanding its footprint across Africa. The group has been active in South Africa since 2003 and opened Manuchar Kenya in July 2010. In 2023, it launched an affiliate in Egypt and agreed to take a 50 percent stake in Cape Town-based fertiliser distributor Anorel – a joint venture that Mark Jacobs, Manuchar’s region manager for Africa, said at the time highlights the tremendous growth potential in the market.
In February, the group signed a partnership with Indorama Ventures Specialty Polymers to bring its solutions to South Africa and in March, Manuchar announced it had signed an agreement to acquire South African CJP Chemicals.
South Africa is also where the Afton Chemical story begins. Announced in October, the partnership builds on an existing collaboration between Manuchar, Afton, and CJP in the country. Under the new partnership agreement, Afton Chemical (a Richmond, Virginia-based subsidiary of NewMarket Corporation) contributes its lubricant additive technology and product expertise, while Manuchar provides local market knowledge, distribution and supply chain.
The collaboration also strengthens the group’s presence in East Africa, where Manuchar Kenya runs a commercial office in Nairobi, with logistics activities in Nairobi and Mombasa and inland logistics support for Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Taken together, CJP and Afton show Thrive 2030’s procurement and M&A pillars working in tandem. The acquisition gives Manuchar a bigger platform in South Africa and a broader offering, “from core commodities to high-value speciality chemicals”, as Laurent put it when the deal was announced, while partnerships such as Afton’s give that platform more to sell and carry it into new markets.
