LONDON (Alliance News) - Africa-focused forestry firm Obtala Ltd on Tuesday said it will change its name, as it also made a trio of senior appointments and announced a restructuring and capital raise.
Obtala will switch its name to Woodbois Ltd, which it said reflect the increasingly apparent strength of the Woodbois brand. It acquired Woodbois in July 2017 for USD14.6 million.
Woodbois is a sawn timber trader. It is Denmark based, but all its operations are in Africa.
Further, the "principals" of Woodbois are to be appointed to the main board of the company. Hadi Ghossein will become group deputy chairman, Zahid Abbas head of trading, and Jacob Hansen chief operating officer.
Current Deputy Chairman Martin Collins will be leaving the firm.
Chairman Miles Pelham said: "The company would like to put on record how grateful we are to Martin for his tremendous dedication and impact during his executive tenure.
"Martin has spent a significant amount of time on the ground in Tanzania over the last 18 months in his efforts to find the best solution for the development of our agricultural assets. He also applied his 25 years of trading experience to the development of in-house tools to monitor and measure performance within the trading division."
Further, Obtala also will either spin-out or find a partner for its agriculture business, which the firm said cannot match the growth of its forestry and timber divisions.
To develop these latter two, Obtala is to raise GBP2.7 million through issuing 49.7 million new shares at a price of 5.5 pence each. Shares were up 10% on Tuesday at 6.50p apiece.