As part of efforts towards preparing Nigerian women for the emerging trends in the global packaging business, the Healthy Living and Women Empowerment Initiative (HELWEI) has empowered women with product packaging and labelling skills for local and export markets.
Speaking at a one-day packaging and labelling workshop for local and international markets for women-led businesses, Ebere Okey-Onyema, executive director of HELWEI, said packaging and labelling, which HELWEI is teaching community women for free, is a big-time business that people have been paying a huge sum to learn.
According to her, there are a lot of opportunities in packaging goods for the local and export markets.
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“This is in line with the HELWEI vision, which is to ensure that women in the Idimu community have optimal health. There are pathways to achieving optimal health and getting money, which packaging is part of. We want our women to grow beyond their immediate environment.
“Some people thought it is only when they take their business into the market that they can make it. No, because things are changing. The objective is to prepare our women for the emerging trend because times are changing and people are doing business online and they are making it big time,” Okey-Onyema said.
Speaking on the theme, ‘Packaging and Labeling for Local and Export Markets,’ Olawunmi Fakoya, CEO of JDP Global Tech Farm Nig Ltd, said packaging is the way to go in business because it helps businesses to act locally but think globally and it is where the money is today.
According to her, every product needs to be packaged for easy distribution and to appeal to potential consumers.
Pointing out that there is no new product in the market, Fakoya said that people only see newly packaged products and that packaging makes a product appear new.
Defining packaging as the act, science, and technology of enclosing or protecting products for distribution, storage, and sale or use, she said the type of packaging to use is determined by the type of product.
“Packaging has four attributes including containment, protection, convenience and communication. It is meant to protect the product and any packaging that doesn’t preserve and protect the product is not a good one.
“Convenience makes it easy to move the product from one place to another without being damaged while communication helps to educate potential buyers about the product, its expiration date, and others.
“Packaging innovation improves product processing efficiency and food safety for healthy use. There are different types of packaging including primary, secondary, and tertiary packages,” she added.
On his part, Osho Gbolahan, another guest lecturer, took the participants through ‘Harvesting, Preservation and Packaging of Agricultural Produces.’
Gbolahan said that processing and packaging mean adding value to agricultural products and that it starts with harvesting.
According to him, producers need not use a process that doesn’t inflict damage that may lead to post-harvest losses.
He said in Nigeria today, about 70 percent of farm produce gets damaged before getting to the market especially fruits, which can easily be processed to reduce the rate of losses.
To reduce the rate of post-harvest losses, he advised participants to look into tapping the opportunity inherent in processing fruits into juice to reduce losses.
“Vegetables for export must be uprooted and washed to remove the soil particles while vegetables for home consumption can be harvested by cutting to enable the vegetable to reproduce.
He said that in packaging, there is a need to indicate if the vegetable is pure organic, and the date of harvest and processing must be indicated especially for okro, don’t chop off the okro. There are codes for all the agricultural products,” Gbolahan said.
While pointing out that vegetables and cassava are products that are good for export, he said Nigeria has a high comparative advantage in the cassava product and there is huge potential in the export of cassava for exporters.
Some participants, who spoke with BusinessDay, commended HELWEI for the opportunity to obtain the wealth of knowledge gained from the workshop.
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Ositadinma Lemeoha, one of the participants, described herself as a gifted farmer from birth and said she was interested in packaging honey for sale.
“I had earlier attended a one-week packaging workshop, and this is a follow-up training for me. I learned a lot from the workshop especially the packaging of ‘akara chips and yoghurt, which I will go forward to hit the ground running,” she explained.
She lauded HELWEI for empowering community women to become self-reliant through the packaging workshop.
Deborah Adewoye, another participant, said as a beneficiary of the previous workshops organised by HELWEI, the packaging workshop has helped her to sharpen the knowledge gained in the past.
“The key takeaway for me was the sessions on processing, packaging, and labelling for the export market and I intend to run with it,” she said.
