Certified Seed Processing Complex in East Africa.

Challenge

The sponsor's certified-seed volumes had doubled over 4 years, but processing was still spread across two aging lines with inconsistent varietal purity — a certification risk flagged by the national seed regulator. Rejection rates on export batches were rising. The board approved consolidation into a single purpose-built complex with three product streams and independent handling per varietal to eliminate cross-contamination.

Strategy

Multi-contract was selected: the technology was mature, the owner had strong PMO experience on a prior facility, and the sponsor wanted the flexibility to source cleaning, treating and packing lines from different corridors. A formal delegation-of-authority ladder was extended for the project to allow single-body sign-off up to USD 3M — see the framework in the Procurement Governance guide.

• Multi-contract to preserve corridor flexibility per package
• Board raised project-specific DoA to USD 3M per contract
• Owner's engineer engaged from FEED, not just execution
• Country risk scoped explicitly in business case

Supplier selection

Cleaning lines were sourced from Europe (six suppliers longlisted, three shortlisted), treating equipment from India (five suppliers longlisted, two shortlisted), packing lines from Europe (four longlisted, two shortlisted). Every shortlisted supplier passed the five-dimension diligence framework. Global B2B Group remained supplier-neutral — the sponsor's committee made all three awards.

• Three parallel RFQs — one per package
• Cross-package interface specifications frozen before any award
• Beneficial ownership screening on every shortlisted supplier
• Weighted scoring per package with common ESG weight

Financing

A regional development bank anchored the senior tranche and set ESG performance standards (labour, effluent, grievance mechanism). A local commercial bank provided a second-lien tranche for working capital and civil works. The sponsor contributed 40% equity. Country-risk pricing was explicit — the DFI classified the country Tier 3 and applied a corresponding premium.

Country-risk pricing mirrored the framework in the Country & Political Risk guide. See the Development Banks & DFIs pillar for structuring context.

Execution

The three package suppliers were coordinated through a weekly interface meeting chaired by the owner's engineer and attended by all three suppliers by video, with monthly in-person all-hands. Cleaning FAT closed 4 non-conformances; treating and packing FATs closed 6 combined. Site erection ran on schedule; commissioning was staged crop-by-crop so certified batches could be produced from the first commissioned line while the second and third finished.

• Weekly video interface meeting across all three packages
• Crop-by-crop staged commissioning enabled early certification
• 10 total NCRs closed across three FATs at supplier cost
• First certified batch delivered 12 days ahead of plan

Lessons learned

• Interface specification freeze BEFORE any award was the single decision that made multi-contract work.
• Staging commissioning by crop turned a 20-month plant into a revenue-earning facility 8 weeks earlier than a big-bang alternative.
• The DFI's country-risk premium was steep but included political-risk cover the sponsor could not have priced independently.
• Weekly cross-supplier interface meetings surfaced two conflicts that would otherwise have been change-orders.
• The DoA extension made contracting fast without compromising governance — the mechanism was time-limited and reverted at project completion.

Executive takeaways

• Multi-contract works when the owner has PMO depth and interface specifications are frozen upstream of any award.
• Time-limited DoA extensions can accelerate large projects without compromising the wider governance framework.
• Country risk should be priced into the business case, not assumed away.
• Staged commissioning by product stream can dramatically improve early payback.

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