Flour Mills opens biggest palm oil refinery in Ibadan

Rom Oil Mills Limited, an automated edible oil refinery and margarine company was at the weekend commissioned by Oyo state Governor Abiola Ajimobi.

The company, a subsidiary company of Flour Mills of Nigeria Plc, is expected to refine crude palm kernel oil, crude palm oil and crude soybean oil into refined oil and distilled fatty acids.

The establishment is a-400 metric tonnes per day universal refinery.

Speaking at the inauguration of the firm in Ibadan, Governor Ajimobi said his administration would continue to do all within its powers to ensure that the state continued to be the preferred destination for investors in Nigeria.

Ajimobi said that the effect of the employment generation that the company would give the people of the state was his own idea of stomach infrastructure.

“This, indeed, is our idea of the so-called stomach infrastructure. We thank the management of the company for their implicit trust and confidence in our state. You have indeed vindicated our stance,’’ he said.

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He added that the cumulative effects of his administration’s developmental drive and consequent influx of investors into our state would result in employment generation and empowerment of the people which, he said, would positively impact millions of our people, as “it is the best and most dignifying stomach infrastructure ever.”

Ajimobi said it was another testimony to his administration’s leadership and “investors-baiting” policies.

He described the development as the dividends of the peaceful atmosphere which his administration brought back to the state at its inception as well as the enabling environment which had been attracting foreign investment, stressing that the management of the company would never have invested their billions of naira in a violent-prone and dirty Oyo State of the past. The governor, while stating that thousands of the sons and daughters of the state would be employed by the company, added that this would have multiplier effects on over a million of their dependants. Governor Ajimobi expressed satisfaction with the rate at which investors had been trooping to the state, stating that “Oyo State boasts of the presence of a leading soya milk manufacturing company in Nigeria, the largest bread-making factory in West Africa, the number one day-old chicks agricultural company in Nigeria, the biggest support service provider for the telecoms industry in Nigeria, among others.

“If you add the largest Shoprite outlet in West Africa that has been recently cited in our state, you will understand how a secure and peaceful atmosphere, as well as an environmentally-conducive state, is essential for employment-generation and indeed, the economic development of the people.”

The governor said that his vision was based on removing the state from the unpleasant profile of a backward, violent state that drove away investors.

“Add all these to the rebirth of night life in the capital city, as manifest in the many hospitality industries that have sprung up in the nooks and crannies of Oyo State, you will realize why development experts say that peace and security are the foundation of any society,’’ he said.

Speaking at the occasion, the Minister of Agriculture, Akinwumi Adesina commended the agricultural agenda of the Ajimobi administration, stressing that the governor had done a lot to assist farmers in the state, especially in the provision of tractors and other farm implements.

He also said that the federal government had distributed 351,000 high quality palm seedlings to farmers in the state, thanking the governor for ensuring that the seedlings got to the end users.

Remi Feyisipo