Like the popular adage goes, ‘tough times never last but tough people do’. This is the typical description of the challenges manufacturers have been facing in the wake of the ban on 43 importable items by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
Rather than lament the imposing challenges to the business ecosystem, it was a time for forward thinking local investors and manufacturers in the agribusiness subsector of the economy to revisit their business plans and devise a working strategy to remain productive in Nigeria’s business landscape.
Backward integration took centre stage at the recently concluded BusinessDay Agribusiness and Food Summit with the question; has backward integration been profitable for manufacturers using agricultural raw materials in Nigeria? This of course led to several correspondence and different opinions from leaders of multinationals who were in attendance.
It is pertinent to note that a venture into backward integration is a cumbersome task, but the result is more profitable. The process of setting up the value chain for backward integration is capital intensive and takes time to actualize, leaving the local manufacturer with the burden of paying back possible loans from commercial banks at 20 – 35 percent interest rate. However, importers do not suffer such fate as they import, pay duties and hit the market running, thereby making money in return to boost their bottom-line.
Undermining the capital intensive nature to backward integrate, many local manufacturers and multinationals in Nigeria like Nosak Group, an indigenous business group with interests in key sectors of the Nigerian economy such as agriculture, agro-processing and manufacturing have taken a giant stride to invest in backward integration knowing that it will pay off in the long run.
One of the group’s Strategic Business Units (SBU), Nosak Farm Produce Limited located at the corridor of the Lagos Port produces refined vegetable oil, refined bleached and deodorized olein (RBDO), palm stearin and fatty acid distillate with an average of 60,000 metric tons (200 metric tons per day) of refined vegetable oil per year, which is only a fraction of the total demand in the market. In addition, the activities in the refinery are complemented with the existence of tank farms with storage capacities of about 50 million liters per month.
The idea of the factory was birthed in order to optimize the 1,300 hectares of oil palm plantation of Saturn Farms Limited, another SBU of the Nosak Group located in Edo state, which records a yield of oil palm Fresh Fruit Bunch (FFB) estimated at 105,882 per annum. The farm is equipped with a 3-ton per day milling plant that process oil palm into crude palm olein.
However, due to rising demands of vegetable oil, a research indicated that the oil palm from Saturn Farms Limited would not be enough to feed the vegetable oil refinery thus it became evident that additional crude palm olein would be required as raw material for processing at the refinery. This led to the search for a suitable location with good access to the port for easy access to raw materials.
When the tides of the CBN’s ban on the 43 items ensued, the group had no choice but to rev up efforts to backward integrate towards sustaining investments in the refinery. In line with this, Nosak Farm Produce Limited acquired additional 13,000 hectares of land in Edo State for oil palm plantation. This it said was geared towards the expansion of the refinery from its current 200TPD to 1,000TPD within the next two to three years.
Between Q4, 2018 and Q1, 2019, the group procured 400,000 seedlings of palm oil from Malaysia, Costa Rica and Indonesian. These seedlings have been planted in batches through the pre-nursery to the main nursery with some currently undergoing intense care by a team of plantation experts at Saturn Farms.
“We are currently working with farmers in the entire value chain to source raw materials locally. This is poised to keep the factory running with the volume of raw materials required for production,” said Toni Ogunbor, the chairman of Nosak Group, stating it is the short-term plan put in place by management pending when the new plantation fields of over 13,000 hectares in Edo state would have been matured to yield FFB of palm oil.
As capital intensive as backward integration can be, the gains far outweigh the pains in the long run. Analysts call on the government at all levels to initiate favorable policies such as availability of funds at single digit interest rates, low taxes, and corporation from host communities.
Ogunbor however raised the issue of land encroachments by locals, which results to court cases that drag for a long period of time. This he said should be investigated by the government to assure investors of hitch free operations in Nigeria, Edo state in particular.
Robert Ogirri, the managing director of Nosak Farm Produce Limited, disclosed that the backward integration initiative is a right step in the right direction as it will give rise to availability of raw materials locally. For him, it will be more gainful to manufacturers, create jobs along the agribusiness value chain, boost foreign exchange and enhance development across board.
SEYI JOHN SALAU
