Boost for air cargo as Nahco commences export of food items

Nahco Aviance, West Africa’s ground handling service provider, recorded a milestone recently as it started the exportation of food items to Europe under its new subsidiary, NAHCO Food and Beverages Limited.

It commenced the exportation of fresh pepper after being certified by the Nigeria Agricultural Quarantine Service (NAQS) and after consultation with foreign food standards agencies.

The initiative has been touted by analysts as one that would revolutionalise the way Nigeria’s produce is packaged for foreign markets.

This feat is the first by any major operator at the airport and comes on the back of an aggressive push by the federal government for increased export of Nigerian products.

The new export business by the Company is in conjunction with its appointed partners to export the first batch of the exports consisting of high-grade fresh Nigerian pepper.

Indranil Gupta, the group managing director/CEO, of Nahco Aviance, said this development was coming at a time when quite a number of stakeholders had identified packaging as a major challenge for Nigerian exports.

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Gupta added that the company is doing a lot to assist local producers of agric products in realizing their dreams of exporting quality commodities to markets in Europe, America and Asia.

“We appreciate the hard work some of our farmers put into producing their goods. NAHCO is trying to support them export these products so as to make these efforts more worthwhile for them. It is also a way of generating scarce foreign exchange for the country,” Gupta said.

Explaining the process which led to the commencement of the food exports, Emmanuel Illah, the senior business development manager, of the new business, Nahco Aviance, pointed out that the project is part of NAHCO’s larger expansion strategy driven by three major objectives: Growth, Risk Reduction and Profitability.

According to Illah, the GMD/CEO of the Company, Indranil Gupta, drove the initiative and has provided support and technical know-how so far.

Disclosing plans by the Company to onboard new consignees/off-takers Illah added, “The marketing campaign and planned roadshow will take care of this. We plan to expand the product range substantially in due course to accommodate the requests from the diaspora markets.”