Guardian

Flour Mills of Nigeria Plc (FMN), yesterday, announced the unbundling of its diversified products in the Nigerian market into three integrated categories, with major investment in them to drive its operations and contribute meaningfully to nation’s economy.

Specifically, the integrated categories are food business, agro-allied business and logistics, support and other subsidiaries.

Disclosing this at the company’s pre- yearly general meeting’s press briefing in Lagos, yesterday, Group Managing Director of the company, Dr. Emmanuel Ukpabi, said the restructuring process was aimed to encompass the company’s diversified products as a one stop shop for growth and investment.

Ukpabi said the restructuring will not only allow the company to derive significant synergies and operational efficiencies, but will enable the utfit launch a renewed push into the food and agro-allied businesses on the strong foundation of its other subsidiaries.

“FMN’s future growth strategy is focused on the continued growth of the Golden penny food basket, backed by an expanded agro-allied footprint.

“To facilitate this, we are deepening our vertical integration through the agro-allied business to compliment and promote the growth of our food business.

“We believe that Nigeria is fertile ground for the growing agro-processing sector. This will not only help to modernize and expand Nigeria’s agricultural resources, it will create jobs and elevate the standard of living for rural population,” Ukpabi added.

According to him, the management has moved in with robust funding to strengthen and drive growth in all its 12 manufactured products in the country’s market through investing billions of Naira to boost profitability.

He said the move to source and add value to locally produced raw materials by processing them locally affords the company not only  “a relatively degree of protection from external volatilities, such as fluctuations in currency or global commodity prices, but also broadens the portfolio of products we are able to offer our customers.”

Speaking on its flour operations, the company’s boss said that in the last 12 months, the management has been engaging in research methodology to meet the challenging goal set by the Federal Government by adding Hight Quality Cassava Flour (HQCF) into Golden Penny wheat products.

To meet the challenge, he said the management invested N9.7 billion into its new West mills milling project, which has been equipped to blend HQCF into wheat flour.

“We are confident that the flexibility of this flour blending facility will be able to meet prescribed standards,” he noted.

He however, added that the company was committed to supporting any initiative to improve the Nigerian cassava growing and milling sectors.

“We have, and are, investing large sums of money to help the development of the cassava industry on the farm, in the mill and in the production of ‘downstream’ Cassava-based products that will be in demand by the fast-developing Nigerian food industry,” Ukpabi said.

For the agro-allied business, the FMN’s helmsman explained that the management has spent N225 billion to acquire a controlling interest in Thai Farm Limited.

The initiative was to show that FMN supports the Federal Government’s agriculture transformation programme, having already commenced major agro-allied investments in the following other significant areas, like rice cultivation and milling, sugar growing, milling and refining, maize and soya growing, among others.