The merger will unite the salt maker with Dangote Sugar, owners of sub-Saharan Africa's largest sugar refinery, and Dangote Rice into a single entity.

NASCON Allied Industries Plc, the salt-making arm of the conglomerate Dangote Industries Limited, will contemplate a business combination with two other food companies in the group during a meeting of its directors' board later this month.

The marriage is expected to unite the salt-maker with Dangote Sugar, owners of sub-Saharan Africa's largest sugar refinery, and Dangote Rice into a single entity, according to a regulatory filing on Thursday.

Both NASCON and Dangote Sugar are listed in Lagos, while Dangote Rice is not quoted yet. Dangote Industries Limited is the holding company for a raft of firms majority-owned by Africa's wealthiest man Aliko Dangote.

The planned merger is coming some 31 months after the group's fiercest rival, BUA Group, announced a similar move consolidating its food businesses - rice, sugar, flour, edible oils and flour - into a new company known as BUA Foods.

BUA Foods would go on to list on the Nigerian Exchange and is currently Nigeria's biggest consumer goods company by market value, worth over N2.4 trillion as of market open on Thursday and N649.6 billion in total assets as of 31 March.

BUA Group is controlled by Abdul Samad Rabiu, Nigeria's second-richest person and Africa's fourth-wealthiest.

Dangote Sugar and NASCON opened trade respectively on Thursday at a market capitalisation of N329.8 billion and N70.2 billion.

The two had total assets estimated at N558.9 billion and N59.2 billion as of the end of March.

Dangote Group's biggest bet is the 650,000 barrels per day oil refinery in Lekki, Lagos, commissioned in May and said to have cost $19 billion.

BUA Group is also building a refinery in Akwa Ibom State with a capacity to process 200,000 barrels of crude daily, expected to come on board by 2025.