• Friday, March 29, 2024
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BusinessDay

Flour Mills Nigeria and food security

Flour Mills of Nigeria

When Topfeeds, a prime brand from the FMN Plc stable was awarded the number one animal feeds brand by the Nigeria Brand Awards in 2018, many industry watchers were of the opinion that it was a well-deserved honour. It was given in recognition of the company’s contribution to agriculture in the country, especially in animal husbandry and its excellent service delivery.

According to Desmond Esorougwe, the executive registrar of the Made-in-Nigeria Brand Awards, the feed stood out as a local brand with very high international quality. Interestingly, he also referred to the heritage of the company and its consistency, especially in delivering excellent service for over five decades since it was established by Mr. George Coumantaros in 1960.

That precisely, is our focus in this piece as the Food and Agro-Allied Group is living up to its Vision, “To be the leading food and agro-allied group in Africa.” The aim of course, is to identify why and how it has managed to weather the economic storms to remain relevant not only with regards to Nigeria but across the continent. The other is for up and coming food-related companies to glean a lesson or two from the company’s survival strategies.

Perhaps, a more critical look at the Mission Statement would shed light on that aspect. It states that: “it is to produce and supply products of superior quality and value to the market thereby enriching the lives of consumers, customers, communities and all stakeholders”.

With the benefits of top technologists and technocrats at its disposal, the deployment of modern processing, preservation and marketing models, FMN has been able to cover a wide spectrum of the food industry, and excel at all. Name them- from Food Service, through Retail Products, Agro-Allied to Packaging, it has in place food products that appeal to people of different age, gender and social strata.

Under the Food Service is a range of the finest and high quality raw materials produced in commercial quantities. These are for the day-to-day sustenance of not a few small and medium scale food businesses. Amongst these are Golden Penny Prime Flour, confectionery flour, soft biscuit flour, noodle flour and Eagle What Flour. There are Thai Farm high quality cassava flour, classic flour, easy bake flour, white wheat flour Golden Penny white sugar and margarines as well as Mai Kwabo flour. All these are premium flours with the requisite recipes of high qualities to meet the expectations of the consumers.

On their part, the retail products make the delightful menu for home cooking and that of cafetarias across the country and beyond. These are on high demand by millions of consumers virtually on daily basis which gladly meet their affordable nutrition. Which should we talk about-is it the Golden Penny Semovita, Goldenvita, Garri, Masavita, Masa flour or the instant noodles?

Maybe the Golden Penny Pastas, regarded as the numerouno of their types, especially in Nigeria are made from finest quality durum, which makes them high in fibre, good for the consumers’ or their growth and general wellbeing. The Golden Penny couscous, margarine, spread, pure vegetable oil, pure soya oil and cube sugar are also part of the Retail brands to satiate the palates of their teeming consumers.

Taking an integrated yet holistic view of what it takes to be leaders in the highly competitive food industry, FMN has the Agro=Allied Division that encompasses thousands of hectres of farmlands across the country. The network has several factories and a chain of activities for the cultivation and processing of agro products. Therefore, the production of a range of fertilizer brands ranging from NPK 27-13-13, through NPK 15-15-15 to the NPK 12-12-17 and the Golden Fertilizer urea of the 46-0-0 types are there for the famers’ bumper yield.

With regards to the poultry industry there are Top Feeds chicken mash, grower mash, layer mash, the broiler super starter, feeds broiler starter and layer Phase 2 to meet the famers’ needs.So also are the Top Feeds extruder catfish and Tilapia feeds t assist the fish farmers to grow their businesses.

With all these and more in place, it is not surprising that the company’s Managing Director, Mr. Anthony Ewing, has reaffirmed the company’s position to continually improve its delivery of value to its customers and the nation as a whole.

As the market leader in the production of food and agro-allied products in Nigeria, the company now has in place, its biggest agricultural investment in Nigeria to date – the Sunti Golden Sugar Estate which was commissioned on the 13th of March 2018 by Muhammadu Buhari, the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.Located on the banks of River Niger, in Mokwa, Niger state, the Sunti Golden Sugar Estate is owned by Sunti Golden Sugar Estates (SGSE) Ltd. a subsidiary of Flour Mills of Nigeria Plc.

The sugar estate features 17, 000 hectares of irrigable farmland and a Sugar mill that process 4,500 metric tons of sugarcane per day. At full capacity, the estate is expected to produce 1 Million tons of Sugarcane which roughly translates into 100,000 metric tons of sugar yearly.

The estate is the purest representation of the Federal Government’s Nigerian Sugar Master Plan (NSMP) with an ambitious backward integration program that intends to set Nigeria on the path to self-sufficient sugar production. The farm at peak production will provide direct employment for about 10,000 people yearly, and impact up to 50,000 people indirectly, including 3,000 small-scale out growers who will be cultivating sugarcane to feed the mill.

The estate has brought infrastructure benefits to the surrounding community, with 28 communities in total taking advantage of a new 30-kilometer road, plus expansive road networks that provide a variety of access routes to the homes of the indigenes. Drains, culverts, and flood-protection walls have also been constructed.

The project illustrates the desire to reduce sugar importation, save billions in foreign exchange, boost local capacity, and reduce unemployment by putting thousands of Nigerians to work.

What is important in all of these ambitious projects on ground, according to the Chairman of FMN, Mr. Coumantaros is for manufacturing to be seen as essentially the main component of all value chains. Such will facilitate higher-value-added processing using locally produced inputs and services in production. For manufacturing in Nigeria to truly succeed and play its rightful role in being a significant contributor to GDP, “we must look at all aspects of the value chain – from inbound Raw material procurement all the way to sales and after-sales service”.

Rightly too, he has urged the Federal Government to continue to implement reforms that would attract the much-needed investments- citing the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Bank of Industry as few of the government agencies that are doing so much to boost the stamina of local industries and their opportunities to compete in a favourable environment.

 

Ayo OyozeBaje