‘Govt should ban more imported goods’

What is your agenda for the government, especially as it is about to constitute a cabinet, which would include economic team?
Government needs to take a serious look of the local industries because it needs to protect them as this would have an impact on employment and growth of the economy. For instance there are a lot of companies in Nigeria that produce standard biscuits and other food products that the country doesn’t need to encourage or allow indiscriminate importation of products like biscuits and other food items that are produced in the country. Therefore the list of prohibited imports needs to be enlarged to include items our local firms produce.

Another example is the need for the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to include the ban of five-layer films used for packing vegetable oil and frozen meat because there are local companies that produce them, with standard technology, which has grown in the country. Local industries have developed very well to meet European standards, so the government and the public need to trust our local industries. This is how we can ensure the sustainability of our local industries and guarantee employment opportunities for our teeming youths.

There’s an urgent need to go back to agriculture. Against the backdrop of dwindling oil revenue, there is now an urgent need to stimulate local and foreign investment in the agricultural and agro-allied sectors and waste recycling.
These would also have multiplier effects on the economy in the area of adequate food, employment generation and lowering of inflation and less dependence on imports.

You mean government should ban more products?
Yes. The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) should ban use of wooden pallets by some local companies in the country because they can generate germs which could contaminate foods and crates. Putting edible food products on wooden pallets as against plastic pallets constitutes health hazards. Nigerian companies need to switch to plastic pallets, especially as there are local industries producing them in Nigeria. Government therefore needs to ban plastic pallets’ imports as there are local industries producing them here. There are more items that government needs to look at, so as to protect local industries.

How can companies like yours too drive growth of the economy and generate employment for teeming jobless youths?
Mankind owes its progress and even existence to our environment. Our environmental scan results of recent years revealed that at the rate the poly and plastic products are being dumped indiscriminately, every available space and channel may soon be covered and clogged by non-bio-degradable plastic and poly wastes in the country. Government alone cannot cope with the challenge of doing the necessary mop up of these waste materials. In Nigeria, there is very low awareness on the importance of recycling of wastes and why it is very important for them to recycle. These wastes if not collected for recycling will remain environmental hazard for them because they keep dumping these wastes into gutters and this often leads to flooding and disease like malaria.

This necessitated our foray into recycling enterprise, to ensure that there is a recovering of the packaging waste off the environment and to ensure that we have a secured and better future not just for our present generation but also for the future generations.

Is that all?
No, we source our major raw materials locally, especially in the agro-allies industries we are involved in. Therefore, a lot of farmers benefit from our patronage of their products. This, therefore, keeps them in business as well as they also help us. About 60 per cent to 70 percent of our raw materials are sourced from Nigeria. For our plastic firm and related firms we patronise Indorama Petrochemical Company in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.

How does your company strike the balance between rising operational cost and consumer friendly prices?
Good question. We owe our success to government for creating the enabling environment, corporate and individual customers who had faith in our capabilities early enough. We would however, wish to appeal that Nigerian business such as ours need to be further supported especially in the area of tariff application for imports. The exigencies of this time in the country have forced us to arrive at what we call “One-Stop Packaging Solutions,” which means Sona Group of Industries provides one-stop solution for flexible packaging and injection and blow moulding plastic packaging products for diverse range of manufacturing industries in Nigeria and ECOWAS countries. This is because we now fully focus on packaging needs of our customers by investing in new technologies, processes and people, to enable us remain competitive and offer high quality and world class innovative packaging solutions. This has therefore, endeared us to our customers and consumers. Thus, we have not priced ourselves out of the market.

How has packaging helped your products in the market?
Of course, packaging is at the heart of how a product would be successful in the market. Our distinct and smart packaging has differentiated our products from other brands. It has helped consumer to identify with the company brand, which propels them to buy the product. We experience this in our sales volume.

Packaging technology has gone through fast and significant developments in recent decades and this has challenged our company to embrace the global quality standard, which is the European standard. This is why instead of using outdated technologies to produce wooden pallets, we embraced plastic pallets, which is hygienic, healthy and safe and eco-friendly. Good packaging facilitates a subtle cooperation between product, packaging process and materials with the objectives of fulfilling needs of all stakeholders along the supply chain including the king-consumer.