• Thursday, March 28, 2024
businessday logo

BusinessDay

Nigeria spends €390m on food, packaging technology in 2020

Nigeria spends €390m on food, packaging technology in 2020

Africa’s biggest economy spent a total of €390 million in 2020 on food and packaging technology, Paul Maerz, managing director of Fairtrade Messe have said.

Maerz who made this known at a press briefing recently in Lagos said with the investments, Nigeria is the second-largest investor in food and packaging technology in Africa just behind Egypt but well ahead of South Africa, Algeria and Morocco.

He noted that the data is from the Germany Machinery Association while commenting on the upcoming 7th edition of the agrofood & plastprintpack.

He said the level of investment from the country is a result of its population growth which is driving the demand for food products and machinery.

Speaking at the upcoming conference, he said global technology leaders from 15 countries will showcase the latest technologies and solutions for the Nigerian and West African Markets on agriculture, food and beverage processing, plastics, and packaging.

He added that the objective of the conference is to bring the latest technology to Nigeria to enable quality production, drive industrailisation, aid food production, and create jobs as well as export of food products to neighboring countries.

“The agrofood and plastprintpack conference will bring the latest technology and best machines from all over the world to Nigeria to aid food production in the country and reduce food importation,” he said.

“Also, it will drive industrialization and aid high-quality products in the country, and export of food products,” he further said.

“It covers the entire agro-food value chain agro-processing……in parallel we run plastics, packaging of food and drinks products.”

According to him, the exhibitors are from Bulgaria, Côte d’Ivoire, France, Germany, India, Italy, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Poland, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, the UAE, and the USA.

Read also: GTCO set to hold 2022 Food and Drink Festival

He noted that the hat the agrofood & plastprintpack exhibition & conference provides a networking opportunity for international and local industry players to gather to find solutions and share best practices for managing the complexities of the perishable food system and pharmaceutical supply chain while adopting new technologies and innovation.

He added that the three days event topics that range from reuse, recycle, standardization processing methods, access to finance, cold chain among others will be discussed, noting that there will be three day Master Class for players across the food and plastic value chain.

The agrofood & plastprintpack exhibition & conference is scheduled for the 22nd – 24th of March 2022 at the Landmark Centre, Lagos.

Also speaking, Alexander Isong, the president of OTACCWA said that his organization is happy to be partnering with Fairtrade Messe to host the exhibition and conference. “We are happy to be in collaboration with them. It has been a win-win situation for everyone.”

“We need to focus slot on transportation on storage. The cold chain is an integral part of the economy. It involves food, cosmetics, and medicine, it is a multi-billion dollar industry.”

“We need to get politics on board for this and that is why we are inviting the government officials to talk on this. We would also be bringing different players from the packaging industry.”