‘Nigeria must evolve efficient, sustainable packaging solutions
Lukas Bartek is the regional manager in charge of Europe, Central Europe, Middle East and Africa (ECEMEA) for DuPont Packaging and Industrial Polymers. He spoke with Odinaka Anudu on how Nigeria can achieve effective and sustainable packaging solutions. Excerpts:
You have worked in many other emerging markets. How would you rate the performance of Nigerian packaging industry with regard to other countries?
Starting with demographic dynamics, it is the most populous country in Africa accounting for one sixth of the African population. According to United Nations, population of Nigeria will reach 440 million by 2050, making it the third most populous country in the world. So, with lots of people to feed with safe food, a need arises for a well-established food value chain and packaging industry to eliminate food waste.
We observe an ongoing shift among Nigerians away from unbranded, unpackaged food to branded and packaged food supported with increased urbanisation and changing consumer lifestyles as well as development of modern retail channels. Conditions in smaller, traditional ‘supermarkets’ like inconsistent electrical supply coupled with very hot climate make it hard to sell packaged products that require cold chain like meat or chocolates. So, we see urbanisation, increasing sophistication of Nigerian consumers and establishment of modern retail channels as quite promising drivers for growth and innovation in this country. We already observe dynamism and innovation in categories like noodles, dairy and bakery.
When we compare it with other countries like South Africa, the needs and priorities are slightly different. Here our focus is more on food safety to feed a fast growing population. We see packaging launches with strong ‘lower carbon footprint’ value propositions like lighter or renewably sourced packages on top of safety and convenience requirements.
Can you give an insight into the techniques and solutions you want to bring to the Nigerian packaging industry?
DuPont is a science company and our purpose is to work collaboratively with the key stakeholders in the value chains we participate in, to find sustainable, innovative and market driven solutions.
In accordance with the local needs, and known infrastructure limitations of retail channels, our first priority area is around packaging solutions for dry food like confectionary, biscuits, noodles and powdered food. We have a very strong offering in that area through our DuPont™Surlyn® ionomer resins used as a sealant layer in flexible packaging applications.
We’ve also seen a lot about single-serve portions for different types of food, including biscuits, ketchup and even spirits. We again have different solutions for improving packaging performance in those areas.
Third area is meat and cheese packaging, growth of which will be accelerated with growth of modern retail channels, thus the stability of the cold-chain the country. We came here together with our collaboration partner Reifenhauser Keifel, to help support knowledge and infrastructure development for production of new structures in that area.
There have been complaints that Nigerian products are poorly packaged. Could it be the machinery, people or skills gap?
I think it is a combination of many factors. First is clearly demand from consumers. When the consumers start asking for better and more safely packaged products, the industry also has a mandate to follow. And this is a trend we observe here. It is also the reason for a stronger presence of companies like Nestle here, there’s pull for their quality standards. This pull will also enforce new legislations to drive improvements in quality standards here. This was also a dynamic we observed in Turkey. Their EU membership application process has forced packaging companies to adopt European standards, creating step-change improvements in their quality level. For Nigeria, we heard about labeling requirements for example; these are important steps.
Related to machinery park, I have seen machines here comparable to the ones we see in Western Europe . Only drawback is the number of companies is quite low, so we cannot really talk about a very developed packaging industry. Also in terms of people, the people here are very skilled and driven to succeed. So the challenge is more market and demand based.
To what extent does packaging add value to the economy?
Of course, packaging is of critical importance for every economy. It is at the core of many consumer related industries. As discussed, it has a huge role to play in development of food industry, which is even more critical for Nigeria. If more investment is made in this area, it might have a snowballing effect in food, retail and consequently other industries.
There was a question in the seminar whether the industry is profitable, and the audience laughed, because if it was not profitable none of them would be here and we would not have enjoyed such a strong interest in the event. So it is an industry with good profitability levels and strong potential for growth.
And employment?
Yes, of course, it does add value. The more investment is attracted to this industry locally, the higher the level of local improvement it can create. And as mentioned, not only in its domain, it will positively impact other industries too.