Periodic quality assurance test key to long-term business profitability

Young entrepreneurs bootstrapping through their first years in business fiercely cut costs and may comprise on product quality assurance, endangering long-term profitability of the business.

Bootstrap is a situation in which an entrepreneur starts a company with little capital. An individual is said to be boot strapping when he or she attempts to found and build a company from personal finances or from the operating revenues of the new company.

Whilst periodic quality assurance tests apply as a rule to every young entrepreneur and all product categories, those who will want to make a bold statement in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) market in Nigeria and around Africa would need to pay greater attention to quality.

Now, among Nigeria’s plethora of deficiencies one of the most critical is the lack of robust national quality management infrastructure.

Abubakar Jimoh, spokesperson and director of special duties at the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) on June 05 stated that in 2016, the European Union (EU) rejected 24 exported food products from Nigeria. These included according to Jimoh, five major products which were illegally exported to the EU and included groundnut, palm oil, sesame seed and beans.

The groundnut was rejected because it contained aflatoxin, which made the quality substandard, the exported palm oil did not scale through the EU’s test because it also contained a colouring agent that was carcinogenic and the beans was initially banned for one year when the EU was not satisfied with Nigeria’s exported beans in terms of quality assurance, it extended the ban by another two years, which expires next year.

“You will recall that a couple of years ago, our beans were rejected by the European Union (EU) because quality testing was not done, so our beans did not meet the required standards. Until a sound quality infrastructure is put in place, our exports will continue being affected” Adebola Adekoya, Senior Quality Assurance/Quality Control Specialist at United States of America Pharmacopeia, Promoting Quality of Medicine (PQM) programme in Nigeria funded by United States of America International Development (USAID) told BusinessDay in an exclusive interview.

There is definitely a national dimension to quality assurance, however, young entrepreneurs setting up business that would produce food products would need to develop and sustain a robust quality assurance mind-set to ensure long-term profitability.

“Attaining the level of standard needed for our food exports to be accepted into developed markets such as the EU and USA means Nigeria will need laboratories that are certified by the International Standard Organisation’s (ISO) ISO/IEC 17025:2005 accreditation, which is required for testing and calibrating laboratories. It confirms the competency of staff working in a Quality Control (QC) laboratory and also attests to the establishment of a quality system” Adekoya affirmed.

STEPHEN ONYEKWELU