Aruwa Capital Discloses Investment in Polysmart After Phase 1 of Its Mowe Plant Is Commissioned

Aruwa Capital Management has disclosed that it invested in Polysmart Packaging, a Nigerian plastic recycling and packaging manufacturer, in December 2025. The investment was made through Aruwa Capital Fund II and announced on 3 November 2026, days after Polysmart commissioned Phase 1 of its expanded food-grade recycled PET (rPET) plant in Mowe, Ogun State. Africa Private Equity News gives the commissioning date as 29 October.

Aruwa says the investment made it Polysmart’s first institutional equity investor. Neither its announcement nor the coverage we reviewed gives an amount.

Other reports point to a figure, but none of them settles the question. The Meridian reported on 3 October that Aruwa Capital Fund II had invested up to US$5 million in convertible notes. It said the details came from a law firm’s own submission and had not been independently confirmed. In March, Verdant IMAP announced a US$5 million equity placement for Polysmart from an unnamed Africa-focused private equity investor. The sources we reviewed do not name Aruwa as that investor. This article therefore gives no amount.

A British International Investment page for Aruwa Capital Fund II lists Polysmart Packaging as a fund investment with a March 2026 start date. That differs from Aruwa’s December 2025 date, and we have not reconciled the two.

Phase 1 and the $60 million project

Polysmart was founded in 2013 as a flexible packaging business and later moved into PET recycling, producing food-grade rPET flakes and resin pellets for beverage and consumer goods makers.

In January, the company announced a US$60 million expansion, with Phase 1 due for commissioning by the end of March 2026, Packaging Insights reported. Africa Private Equity News reports commissioning on 29 October. Daily Trust, reporting on the official opening and commissioning, said the facility would process up to 100,000 tonnes of mixed plastics a year at full capacity. None of the sources we reviewed explains the move from the March target to late October.

The $60 million figure is the project cost. It is not the size of Aruwa’s investment.

Aruwa has said that, at full capacity, the expansion could support 1,000 direct jobs, more than 50,000 indirect jobs and about $72 million a year in foreign-exchange savings. These are projections, not measured results.

Debt and governance

Polysmart has also raised naira debt. In February 2026 it issued N13 billion of non-interest commercial paper through Polysmart SPV Limited under a N20 billion programme, BusinessDay reported in April. That financing is separate from Aruwa’s investment.

In May, BusinessDay reported that Polysmart had appointed three non-executive directors, one of them Adesuwa Okunbo Rhodes, Aruwa’s founder.

Okunbo Rhodes said Polysmart is “proof that world-class manufacturing can be built, owned and run in Nigeria.” Chief executive Wasiu Balogun said Aruwa’s backing “helped us bring Phase 1 to commissioning.”

What remains unclear

No amount, stake or terms have been published in the sources we reviewed. Aruwa describes its investment as equity, while the Meridian’s account describes convertible notes. We have not reconciled the two. It is also unresolved whether the December 2025 investment, the March 2026 placement and the November announcement describe one transaction.