Boost for food products as Flour Mills delivers 16 trucks to customers

Flour Mills of Nigeria (FMN) has awarded 16 new trucks to customers in its food segment to enable them grow their businesses and reach wider markets.

FMN said on Monday in Lagos that this was in line with its earlier promise in March to reward the efforts of its partners while appreciating and celebrating them.

“Doing this means that we are supporting the businesses of our partners, dealers and customers, so that they can grow. Once they grow, you can be sure FMN will continue to grow,” Paul Gbededo, group managing director, Flour Mills of Nigeria, said.

Gbededo said FMN was fulfilling a promise it made to various categories of customers earlier in the year that it would provide them with vans to support their businesses to enable them take goods from its factories to their warehouses and from warehouses into the retail.

“This is just the start. In years to come, we are going to be doing it in tranches so that we will be seen to be feeding the nation every day,” he added.

Devlin Hainsworth, managing director, Foods, said, “Two, three months ago, we gathered our biggest partners and customers to really acknowledge their performance through the year and a particular category that took the most in terms of performance and driving the overall food business in terms of Golden Penny or FMN, we award them with trucks.”

Hainsworth said FMN was serious about partnership with customers, adding that the company had achieved a lot from this.

“We have reached the level in terms of market share and size. We are really creating number one brands in the key categories and still have the opportunity to go to another level. In striving for more and more, let’s go to the next level. There are so many consumers from length and breadth of the country and it is important we reach them,” he stated.

While addressing customers, Hainsworth said the company would continue to show customers how much it valued them by constantly supporting their businesses.

“The real action is in the market, not in the glass house. We know it is not easy out there. We know you have so many things to contend with. Together, we will continue to feed the nation every day and grow your business. You have helped build FMN and we are excited about our future.”

Paul Udochi, head of sales, B2B, said the company was convinced that empowering its customers meant empowering itself, saying that FMN intended to make this an annual event.

Udochi said it would eventually affect all sections in FMN, though each always had one way or the other of rewarding customers.

One of the customers from South-West region, Elizabeth Olufunmilayo Ajibola of Mt Olives Nigeria Limited, said the gesture proved that FMN was customer-centric.

Ejide Ayinde, who represented the North-West region, pointed out that the van would enable him to access communities that were hitherto difficult.

“I am happy. I wish to extend my gratitude to Flour Mills of Nigeria. This will help us in distribution and to access communities that we have never accessed,” Ayinde, who came from Abuja, said.

Dosunmu Funmilayo of Michelle Edmund Ventures Limited said it was an indication that FMN was a good company and cared about its partners.

“It is an indication that Flour Mills keeps to its promises. The van will help us to get to certain places we need to be. It will help us in distributing the products,” he added.

FMN is one of Nigeria’s largest conglomerates with interests in flour milling, sugar, palm oil, noodles, animal feeds, grains and logistics, among others.

FMN has invested N50 billion in the sugar value chain, providing a concrete example of efforts to cut sugar importation into Africa’s most populous country.

The group’s Sunti Golden Sugar Estate , near Mokwa, in Niger State, is situated on 17,000 hectares of irrigable farmland, and a sugar mill that processes 4,500 metric tons of sugar cane per day.

It invested over N1bn in irrigation system and infrastructure, including drain pumps, pump stations and a power grid, a recent statement from the group said.

ODINAKA ANUDU