Investing in plastic products manufacturing factory

The market for plastic products in Nigeria is very vast. As a packaging input, its uses cut across various industries – be it food, chemical, petroleum and other industries. The raw materials are readily available in Nigeria. They are by-products of petro-chemical industry. The raw materials importers are also almost everywhere in Nigeria.

The natural endowment of crude oil in Nigeria and the availability of petro-chemical industry have made the sourcing of raw materials a very easy task.
Plastic products are value added export materials that can be readily sold to West, East and North African countries and world markets, in line with the non-oil export drive to reduce the excessive dependence on crude-oil export. This will no doubt assist in resolving some fundamental economic problems, which include chronic shortage of foreign exchange, balance of payments deficits, balance of trade dis-equilibrium, mounting external indebtedness, debt service burden, and unemployment.

Technical information
Plastic products production entail making various moulds to suit requests and demands of the end users. The moulds are inserted into the plastics making machine called blow moulding machine. Raw materials are fed into the machine.

The raw materials otherwise called resin undergo the process of waxing, crushing, compression moulding and chilling into plastic products.

To establish the factory, it involves pre-operational activities such as company formation, feasibility study and legal documentation. After pre-investment operations, procurement of a suitable rented accommodation will follow. This is followed by the procurement and installation of machinery. Other activities include recruitment of appropriate personnel, sourcing of raw material and other inputs after which commercial production take off. Serious minded investors can be assisted in the realisation of the project.

Financial implication
1. Project costs: N
1.1 Pre-investment : 100,000
1.2 Plant and machinery : 12,000,000
1.3 Utilities : 2,500,000
1.4 Working capital : 2,500,000
Total N17,100,000
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A well packaged feasibility report is a pre-requisite to finance sourcing from banks. This can be provided for serious minded investors.

Profitability
Plant capacity 2,400 pieces per day, working for 250 days in a year = 600,000 piece at N150 per unit = N90 million turnover per annum. Production cost of N65 million has been computed, leaving a profit of N25 million per annum. This is no doubt a good means of livelihood for Nigeria.

OLUMAKINDE ONI