Poor packaging, compliance fester rejection of Nigerian products

Poor compliance by individual exporters and poor packaging have continued to fester rejection of Nigerian foods exported to the European Union (EU).

This situation has done more harm than good, as it hurts sales and profits of farmers and food exporters in the country while also de-marketing them in both local and international markets.

“The ban by the EU on our beans has affected the profitability of farmers and exporters of the crop. Most beans exporters are now shifting to other export commodities,” said Femi Egbesola, national president, Association of Small Business Owners (ASBON).

“Government need to educate farmers on adopting good planting practices by knowing the right quantity of fertilizers to apply and also ensure that the beans we consume is also healthy,” he said.

EU recently has extended its ban on importation of dried beans from Nigeria by three years. They accused the country for not doing enough to lift the ban during the period of the initial suspension.

“The continued presence of dichlorvos (pesticide) in dried beans imported from Nigeria and maximum residue levels of pesticides shows that compliance with food law requirement as regards pesticide residual cannot be achieved in the short term,” the official journal of the EU said.

“Duration of the importation prohibition should therefore be extended for an additional period of three years to allow Nigeria implement the appropriate risk-management measure and provide required guarantees,” the journal added.

Beans has been analysed by European Food Safety Authority to have a maximum residue limit of 0.01mg/kg but the ones from Nigeria contain between 0.03mg and 4.6mg/kg of dichlorvos pesticides.

Last year, the EU banned some food exports from Nigeria for not meeting up with international standards. The food items banned till 2016 include: beans, sesame seeds, melon seeds, dried fish and meat, peanut chips and palm oil.

All other banned for other commodities have been lifted expect for beans.

BusinessDay findings shows that the country is not ready to resume the exportation of the banned dried beans to the EU due to indications that concrete arrangements are not being put in place to forestall future recurrence of the ban.

Analysts have always insisted that if our agric produce will be accepted it must meet standards and be packaged properly to favourably compete with other commodities.

“Obviously, when they see that our products are not properly packaged, they turn them down,” said John Kachikwu, chairman, Small and Medium Scale Group of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI).

The impact of poor packaging is that the country’s food exports do not often compete well with products from other countries that are better packaged, with interesting designs and labels. Secondly, Agro produce shipped outside Nigeria are consistently rejected in Europe, the Americas and Asia on back of haphazard packaging, thereby increase costs for importers and hurting top- and bottom-lines profit for farmers.

Analysts say better packaging promotes impulse buying, defined as the instant purchase of goods that were not originally planned for.

Josephine Okojie