Budding exporters in the south-south have got a handle on the most dreaded aspect of export trade, getting foreign buyers. This happened at an export clinic for beginners in Port Harcourt Tuesday, December 13, 2022 at Aldgate Congress Hotel.
The Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) assembled experts to drill the newly registered exporters. Top among the experts is Victoria Ozurumba, chief operating officer, Avikar Global Resources Limited.
The female CEO, who has broken into the export market successfully, gave tips on how to start informal export and how to break into foreign markets while Joe Itah, NEPC zonal coordinator, gave formal tips, especially for the commercial export market.
In her informal tips, Ozurumba, who started with informal export of dried fish, later crayfish, plantain flour, and now many products including tinned banga oil told the beginners to use informal relationships to get into foreign markets.
She said that people should stop being jealous of neighbours whose children are abroad but advised Nigerians to latch on such relationships and the large population of the Nigerian Diaspora to build foreign markets.
She said the beginners can use their products as gifts to those travelling abroad as long as those persons can accept to pay for the freight. Soon, she said, the products would become hot cake abroad, as hers have become.
In whatever the new exporters want to do, they should build product integrity and create trust in their practice. They also always help other exporters.
She noted that trade as a whole is very difficult these days because of foreign exchange crisis.
Giving formal tips, the NEPC zonal coordinator and his team talked about trade fairs in foreign lands which NEPC promotes to expose made in Nigeria products.
The NEPC team also said the exporters can contact the Nigerian trade missions abroad to help them penetrate those markets, and also contact foreign embassies in Nigeria.
They could also explore search engines and websites to get those who need items worldwide but urged them to crosscheck such buyers very well to avoid scammers.
“I started in a very small way, not intending to export. I started with my small catfish. At one point, I was injecting the fish myself. Later, I started drying them in my kitchen and took them round to my friends, and later to restaurants, defying early resistance,” Ozurumba recalled her days of little beginning.
“My strategy was to make my dried fish sand-free, and this was my selling point. I put in the highest levels of cleanliness and high hygiene. People responded because they developed trust in my product.
“Next, I began to talk to those with children and relatives abroad. From there, my products connected with the Diaspora community.
“The key I want to give out is, transparency, care, trust. Soon, they began to ask if I could send other products to them overseas. That was how I introduced the crayfish line. I washed it before drying, all to achieve the highest level of cleanliness.
“Always add value. If you must survive in the market, especially in export, you must think of a way to add value. I began to find out what I could value. I picked on plantain.
“Integrity with transparency is the market opener. People add many bad things in their products, some add flour to their plantain flour; some add other things to Cameroon pepper to make it very red.”
On why Nigerian products are always rejected abroad and the way out, she cautioned. “First step in exporting is, don’t add things to your product. Some scrub up garri or items that are poured on the floor. This way, they introduce sand to it.
“Don’t ever say nobody is looking. Your product will report you at the border where tests would be conducted. That is why most products from Nigeria litter everywhere in foreign lands after being rejected.
“Carefree attitude is not tolerated in export business. Some women do not remember to cover their hair while in the food centre (kitchen), some women keep talking while preparing food; some sneeze.
“These are unwholesome practices that harm export business. Whatever you did wrong in hiding will wait for you at the border and expose you. In export business, your sins will surely catch up with you.
“How product integrity opened the door of big business to me. Quality integrity can sell you anywhere. I got a big order because of the quality integrity of my Cameroon pepper. You must adopt quality control to sustain quality integrity of your products.
“When you do everything well, do the right packaging so others cannot steal your product by tampering with the label by copying it and changing it to theirs. Bad or impure products will betray you one day.”
She explained her big bang with banga saying, “You must work hard to get a product with additional value. That was how I came up with Banga oil, after one year of experimenting. It can last for three years. That is why it has been canned.”
Also Kobo, an official of NEPC in the Port Harcourt regional office, drilled and thrilled the new exporters on the basics of international trade.
She took them through issues such as documentation, documentation, export readiness and product readiness.
She also lectured them on the need to open various accounts including domiciliary accounts.
Kobo also harped much on need for a new exporter to endeavour to do market research, develop market access, activate market exposure ( by deciding what value to add), to plan your market entry strategy (how you want to do your export business), to plan your market delivery (air, ship, through a person, etc), and to do market expansion by asking, after this stage, what next.
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Speaking in an interview, Itah said the new exporters were newly registered ones on their portal and that NEPC usually organizes training for such a category.
He said the council would continue to handhold them and train them till they begin to trade around the world, saying the driving force is to make Nigerians understand that export is now for survival for Nigeria.
“The NEPC has made it a duty to hold training for newly registered exporters which we call Export Clinic. We also use the opportunity to call back those who have gone inactive over the years for one reason or the other. We do this to rekindle their interest in export,” Itah said.
“What we have been able to achieve is that after a certain time of registering the new exporters, we now realize that since they are green horns, they need to be mentored and tutored or handheld.
“Due to all the pitfalls around export business, what the newly registered exporters were able to gain today, a lot of them have testified that their eyes have been opened.
“We stress it that in as much as finance is important, passion, integrity, and discipline are equally important. If it’s only foreign exchange that is your craze, and you are not seeing the underlying benefits such as job creation, job sustainability, wealth creation, then you may derail, even if you made the money. The idea of an export culture and making Nigeria to be competitive in the international market may be killed.
“We make it a point of duty to emphasize that as new exporters, these are the things you need to know and be involved in to stay in the export business.
Speaking on one-state-one-product scheme, Itah said,
“These are newcomers who should be allowed to work with what they came up with. You have to allow them to settle down.
“You want to know their strengths and weaknesses, where they have comparative advantages as individuals. At the end of the day, when they progress on their export journey, the narrative can be guided to some other areas.
“For instance, palm oil is an OSOP item here, but it’s not all of them that have advantages in it. Even the OSOP policy does not stop any state from doing any other thing.
“If we see that the new exporters have preference for cassava flour, turmeric, ginger, etc, you allow them to do that, and then you can guide them into OSOP areas,” Itah concluded.
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