Nigerian Breweries Limited, the second largest capitalized company on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, has formally commissioned its upgraded Ota, Ogun State factory with new investment of over N11 billion.
The improved plant with multi-billion naira pet line, modern water treatment plant and a state of the art waste water treatment plant bring to 10 total number of NBL plants in Nigeria with two of them located in Ogun State.
Commissioning the plant said to be one of the best in Heineken family yesterday the governor of Ogun State, Ibikunle Amosun congratulated NBL management on the feat and called on other corporate companies and individuals to support the developmental efforts of the nation.
He assured that the Ogun State government would continue to create favourable environment for investment
He encouraged manufacturing companies that the only way to make progress is import substitution and backward integration.
He gave NBL pat on the back for achieving up to 55 percent local content in its production and encouraged them to increase the percentage. With economic challenges, Amosun said it would be in the interest of manufacturers to increase their import substitution content in view of forex challenges.
Also speaking at the event, the former president, Olusegun Obasanjo who was represented by Abraham Idowu asked the federal government to improve investment climate and ease of doing business in Nigeria towards growing the economy.
In his address, the chairman of NBL, Kola Jamodu said the upgrade of the Ota plant is a testament to NBL’s corporate philosophy of winning with Nigeria.
”As part of our commitment of winning with Nigeria, we have made a public commitment to ensuring sustainable local sourcing of input materials of our operations. Currently, our product packaging is 95 percent locally sourced and a lot of the ancillary companies who we use to attain this highpoint in our value chain are based in Ogun State”, he said.
Also speaking, Corporate Affairs Adviser of NBL, Kufre Ekanem said the company is now more desirous of achieving upto 60 local content by next year. This he believed would increase employment.
The Ota plant, formerly Sona Breweries joined the Nigerian Breweries family in 2011. In 2012, the brewery received the Food Safety Management Systems Certification .
Daniel Obi
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