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The full ownership and control of the country’s premier miller, Flour Mills of Nigeria Plc, could be passed on to John Coumantaros, the Greek-American heir of George Coumantaros, the miller’s deceased founder.

In 1963, the older Coumantaros gave the entity a go as a mono-product business, building it from a modest factory on a Lagos seaport into a group worth N2.3 trillion in annual turnover.

That feat of revenue generation, unmatched by any Nigerian bank or banking group except Access Holdings, underscores the manufacturing behemoth the business just as old as Nigeria’s independence has transformed into in a little over six decades.

The late Coumantaros, a yachtsman from Athens who sowed the seed of the empire which blossomed over the years to stretch inwards to other parts of West Africa, notably Liberia, imagined wheat milling for a start.

Today, its scope of activity is much more complex and diversified. The company has evolved and branched out into different operations within and outside food processing including logistics, port operations, real estate, power generation and agribusiness.

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