By Oyeniyi Iwakun
Mrs. Nwaneri Olubukola is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Naija Pride Agribusiness Global Limited, a subsidiary of Best Foods Limited, Lagos. In this special interview with MMS Plus, she unveils the opportunities in agribusiness and investment potentials in Agricultural value chains. Mrs. Olubukola noted that the challenges facing farmers and farming activities in Nigeria are openings for profitable investments for Nigerians who would tap into it while explaining that Agriculture no longer requires the old ways of being physically present on the farmland with cutlasses and hoes but the application of science and technology.
What do you do in Naija pride?
Naija Pride Agribusiness Global Ltd is a leading name in the agricultural value chain dealing in the business of agricultural produce off-taking from the farm gate to major city markets, especially Lagos. We off-take in large quantities from farmers who are in partnership with us through Memorandum of Understanding (MoUs) and agreements. We transact business from Kano, Kaduna, Jigawa, Plateau, Kastina, Gombe, Ondo, and Edo states. We do not compromise on quality, price and consistency. Maintaining the qualities of our produce especially Tomatoes is being done with the usage of a refrigerated 40ft container and this is achieved in partnership with APMT who handles the logistics of our perishables.
Naija pride is mainly into buying and sales of Nigeria foods right from the farm gate. We tell ourselves that in every food we deal with, we must be able to trace where your food is coming from. We know our farmers and their farms. We are able to trace our food to the origin. All because of standard, quality, price and we have told ourselves that we cannot deal with imported foods. So the major objective is to improve the lives of our farmers so that they can earn well for their work. We want to ensure that Nigerians eat healthy foods not chemcalized foods. We should learn to eat what we produce and be proud of it. That’s what brought about naijapride.
Aside bringing foods from the North, are there other products you take to the Northern parts of the country?
Yes! We take crayfish, from Oron, Uyo; palm oil and Garri from Edo state and Smoked catfish from Lagos to the North. So it’s two ways traffic and presently we are working on sending fresh fish to the North. Although, we have not concluded our arrangements on that but there is a high demand for it and we are working assiduously on a cold truck that can conveniently convey that because that is what we use for our perishables.
Have you been able to meet up the demands of your customers so far?
Well, for our immediate captive customers, Yes! We have been able to meet up with their demands but we are spreading our tentacles, we are putting measures in place and we are recruiting more staff having discovered that Lagos is a highly populated state.
How can potential investors take part?
The investment scheme is under the Best Foods because it is directly in charge of farms and what opened up to them is that people should have an opportunity to come and become farmers while they are not on the farm. What do I mean by that? You are interested in farming activities or farming business but you don’t have the time to do it. What can be done? We are putting out green houses with open field farming systems and there is a minimum investment for individuals to come in and the person has the opportunity to visit the farm anytime to see what is being done in terms of what is planted and the plants are growing. So it is an open door policy. Farming is a business to make money.
What are the basic requirements for the investments you talked about?
Whoever wants to invest in Agricultural commodity, for naija pride is N250, 000. Initially we pegged it at N500, 000 but we reconsidered the fact that the potential investors are salary earners who want to start small and grow big. So, we brought it down by 250% and for the farm, it’s about the same thing and could go as much as N1million, N2Million and more depending on the capacity of the investor.
The profit is 3% per month and there is no risk on the part of the investor because all our businesses are insured.
Although as it is with every business, there is always a risk especially when you are dealing with perishables, we have had situations where the vehicles break down and = taking off late or the goods not getting to the market on time. There are some sorts of risks due to our experience over the years but we have also learnt to trust our insurance companies. We went to them and presented before them the loads we have to carry and they assured us that there is no problem. So, the Investor has absolutely nothing to fear.
Are there plans to help small and medium scale farmers to improve their planting modes and yields?
Yes! We are spearheading the NMBGA platform. We are championing right now the propagation of having nurseries. We are promoting people to go into nursering as a business. Most farmers don’t know how to nurse their seeds and if you don’t nurse your seeds properly you will record bad yields. So if you have an organization whose primary job is to nurse seeds and transfer to farmers to plant, it helps the farmer to achieve whatever he intends to achieve. That’s a way of helping small farmers and small investors to come into agriculture and also we have a partnership arrangement with Lagos state government through the Agriculture university at Epe, to see how we can train young people coming up in Agriculture to learn their roles.
Farmers are often confronted with the problems of storage of their produce due to lack of facilities. How are you planning to help them out on this?
In terms of storage, from our investigation long term ago, we discovered that most farmers have their own storage systems in their houses, farms and barns, but for perishables, the only storage system you can have is the cold store, and we have been talking and talking about that and it is beginning to sound like a broken drum. Investors need to come in and invest in storage facilities both at the farm base, aggregation farms and at the receiving points here in Lagos because that will further help us to control pricing. If the farmer is not under pressure to sell at a giveaway price, it will help him to plan the next season, because he has enough money in his pocket. If the off-taker doesn’t have to off-take at a ridiculous price, knowing that he would always meet his tomatoes at a good condition at the take off farm and also that when he gets to Lagos he wouldn’t need to sell-off based on market force demand because there is food storage system and that if the market is not favourable, you can store your produce at the storage and wait. That will help us in stabilizing pricing.
We are now looking at partnering with organizations to see how we can build some aggregation centers in the North that will have food storage facilities attached to it. I think that will help the farmers, off-takers and everybody along the value chain.
Are there plans to build partnership with farmers that you don’t have existing relationships with?
Yes! Although, it is difficult because you cannot cover everywhere but what we have done is to go through their governments, through the ministry of Agriculture, and the ministry of Agric is collating data on all their farming, filing it and mapping out the farms. That will give us an idea of whom and who is into agriculture. Even if farmland is half an-hectare, it will be covered. That is what we are doing right now.
You once mentioned your plans of opening a new market at Epe axis, how far have you gone about the project and what is the aim?
Like I mentioned before about market forces, whether you like it or not you, when you bring in your goods, you sell at any price the market is asking for not what you want to sell for; then Lagos state government came up with this policy that they are demolishing mile 12 market and decentralizing it. They are now tasking the private sector to see what they can do in terms of spreading out food markets in Lagos and we looked at it and said what can we do solely? Hence, the thought of creating an alternative market, create secondary markets all over the places so that we don’t have it concentrated in one place and so that someone living at about 60km to 70km away would not have to travel down before he can have access to food commodities.
We are starting at the Lekki-Epe axis to build the market and we already have a place there ready for us to use. We are just putting a few things together, the partners are ready and we are working with the Lagos state government, they are giving us some data on who to reach out to and we are ready for the supply to that market. The market is expected to take off by July, 2018.
Are you also considering the area of export?
Yes! We are looking at the area of export and to have export, you need a shipping line and we are already partnering with APMT. APMT has a terminal in Lilypond and another one at Apapa. We are going to be using their terminal to move foods, for our sorting, storage, grading, packaging and all that. From there, eventually, we will look at the export market but that will be something that will happen probably by the end of this year or early next year.
Do you also undertake packaging services for people?
Naija Pride is known for bulk purchase and bulk sales but sometimes, towards the end of last year. During the yuletide period, we decided to do something very unique that had never been done in the history of this country. We prepared a Christmas hampers where you will not find chocolate, biscuit, or any of sort. What you will find inside it is strictly Nigerian foods like rice, beans, palm oil, crayfish, garri, smoked catfish and others, all beautifully packed separately. Once the hampers went out, some stores, supermarkets saw it and were amazed. They said, if this can be beautifully packaged, why can’t we have access to it? So, they started placing order for us to package for them so that they can sell. Then, we had to set up a small unit to handle retailing, packaging and branding.
What are the challenges you see in Agriculture and the supply chain in general in Nigeria?
Let me just stop on the supply chain because an attempt to x-ray agriculture generally will keep us here for the whole day.
For the supply chain, we have the problems of non-existence of aggregation centers. That is what we call the marketing points in those days, if that will make any sense. For you as an off-taker, you have to go to individual farms, meet the farmers. That’s a challenge. If we have an agricultural organization that is doing that, we can now concentrate on picking up the foods, transporting it and distributing it to our customers.
For our perishables, since we don’t have food storage, we have to work from morning till night. Very early in the morning, our farmers are on the farm harvesting, and that very day, they have to load the trucks and there is a time limit for that vehicle to arrive Lagos. If anything goes wrong along the way, then, we may lose that product but if we have organizations who are professionals in aggregating it will be of help.
Then for Logistics, we have transporters, who are professionals and in arriving here we have storage facilities for the perishables. Then we will say the supply chain is complete but for now the supply chain is not complete because the first chain is not there and on the one in the middle, logistics, we now have a few of them coming up now, logistics’ companies are registered and well insured and some of them have cooling vans that we can use. They are now coming to tell us that they are ready to come on board, but the last one is at the end, who receives your goods from you? We don’t have that storage yet. So the opportunity is wide open for investors to come in and fill that vacuum.
What is your advice for those planning to go into agriculture?
For those who want to go into supply chain of agriculture proper, I want to say go ahead, because agriculture is a new oil in Nigeria now and in the next few years our population is going to explode. It is important that we all have to eat, but the question is how do we feed if we don’t farm, and don’t modernize the ways we are doing things? Whoever wants to come into agriculture should not come into it with old mentalities of cutlass and hoe. Think of the technological aid of how it is being done presently and that also includes the supply chain. How can we move away from the open conventional touch to electric railway transport system with well ventilated or refrigerated wagons? How can we move to using well refrigerated trucks even while inside towns. So it is whole wide chain that anybody coming into agric could tap into. The opportunity is endless. So, I will say you cannot go wrong if you invest in Agriculture.
