Nigerite, Nigeria’s premier roofing and ceiling materials manufacturing company, says it is on growth path with a strategy to extend its product portfolio and ultimately increase its share of the market.
This means that the market will be offering consumers wider choices and variety while investors and shareholders of the company expect value addition coming from increased earnings.
Frank LE Bris, the company’s new Managing Director, who gave this hint during an interview with a select team of journalists in Lagos recently, noted that the Nigerian market has very high potential, assuring that he was in Nigerite to extend the company’s products portfolio.
LE Bris, an Engineer, who had been in Nigeria working for Peugeot Automobile Nigeria (PAN) for several years, revealed that the company was planning a new product that would be unveiled towards the end of this year.
“I am here to support the current team to extend our portfolio of products and increase our market share; it is mainly going to be what we call a contract with the market,” he said, explaining that they would be leveraging all the new projects coming up in Abuja and Calabar, plus all the new World Bank projects co-financed with Nigerite, all the big business projects such as Eko Atlantic City to develop the company further.
Toyin Gbede, the company’s director, Marketing and Sales, added that Nigerite was going through a transformation from a company that offers products to one that provides solutions.
“We are beginning to play at the international level. So, with the expertise of the managing director, we will drive this transformation process. Nigeria itself has transformed to what it is today. He is in a better position to see us in what we are, and having gone back to Europe and seen the rate of development in terms of products offering, coming back now gives him better appreciation of the transformation the country has gone through,” Gbede said.
He noted that in the solutions segment of the market, there are no big players, pointing out that materials used in most of the shopping malls around are not purchased locally. “They bring all of them from Europe because they are not available locally; what we are therefore, trying to do is to provide those materials locally. We believe that as the country is experiencing this transformation, solution is very essential.”
On his strategies to remain a leader in a highly competitive market washed with cheap and substandard products, LE Bris said they would stay with the quality of their product, stressing that “we cannot go down to lower quality; we always accompany the needs of the customers who need something new; for us, it all about innovation and following the needs of the customers”.
Gbede agrees, adding, “We have been around in the past 55 years; we really understand the Nigerian market and we are here for the long haul. Our knowledge of the market works for us; we have been consistent in our product offering. In addition to our knowledge of the market, we are offering innovative products.”
Chuka Uroko
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