Jubilee Syringe Manufacturing company in Awa, Akwa Ibom state says it is expanding its market reach to cover the West African sub-region to gain optimally from its daily production of one million syringes and to boost foreign exchange earnings.
The company which began operations barely three years ago has a production capacity of 1.5 million syringes daily and is diversifying into the manufacturing of Personal Protection Equipment such as facemasks, hand gloves, and single needles in response to the coronavirus outbreak.
Akin Oyediran, managing director of the company in an interview with Businessday said expanding into the West African regional market would help the company to earn foreign exchange and to benefit from incentives by the Nigerian Export Promotion Council.
“We employing the locals, we are training them, it is a sustainable company, we are doing very well in terms of market reach, our market reach is throughout Nigeria and West Africa, we are expanding into different products. For a company that is just three years old, it is a success story,’’ he said.
“The reason we are focusing on exportation is because of foreign exchange, the current exchange rate of the dollar makes it quite attractive and every dollar of products we export we get some incentives from the Nigerian Export Promotion Council.”
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Oyediran who allayed fears of the company is sustainable, identified dependence on governments by firms as one of the reasons firms fold up adding that the company has remained self-sustainable since it began production.
‘By the time, startups run for two or three years and enjoying tax holidays from the government, with many things happening in the market including the value of the Naira which happens every three years, it makes some companies fold up.
“Let me be concerned with my production, half of it would go out and half would stay in Nigeria because of the dollar I am going to get from that production.”
He said when the company reduced its production capacity during the lockdown, “because of that our product in the market went down, our customers started complaining. So as long as we producing quality products, as long as we know that we are not totally dependent on government, everything falls in place.
Oyediran who also announced plans by the company to start the production of specialized needles to be used for vaccination said with the recurring outbreak of diseases, the demand for vaccination would increase thus the need for specialized needles adding that after COVID-19, vaccination would be popular in the country.
He commended the state government for creating an “enabling environment” for firms to be attracted to the state and hoped that more companies and businesses would soon be attracted to the state in the coming years.
Earlier, the management of the company had received the state house of an assembly committee on rural development and public utilities led by Usoroh Akpanusoh representing Esit Eket/Ibeno State constituency on an oversight function.
Akpanusoh urged the company to partner with the state government to provide employment to the youths while also calling on the management to work with local suppliers as part of efforts to support the production of raw materials.
The lawmaker who expressed the readiness of the assembly to support legislation that would encourage the growth of businesses in the state lauded the company for the plans to diversify into other products.
The committee was later conducted round the facilities.
