Erisco Foods’ $150m tomato paste factory promises more jobs

Erisco Foods Limited, Africa’s largest tomato paste maker, promises to create thousands of jobs for Nigerians as long as the Federal Government supports and protects the $150 million plant.

The 450,000 metric tonnes per annum capacity plant in Lagos will also steer a tomato paste revolution in the country, ending the annual wastages of over 75 percent of fresh tomatoes across Nigeria, said Erisco.

“Erisco Foods currently has staff strength of 1,600,” said Eric Umeofia, president, Erisco Foods Limited, at the commissioning ceremony of Erisco Tomato Paste Revolution in Lagos last Thursday.

“By the time we begin to operate to optimum capacity, we should have 9,000 direct staff in our Lagos factory alone. Our backward integration programmes planned for Jigawa, Sokoto and Katsina will generate employment and prosperity for 50,000 Nigerians within three years while off-takers and our distributors and retailers will be in hundreds of thousands,” Umeofia assured.

According to him, the firm’s facilities are open to genuine tomato paste companies in Nigeria,  as Erisco can process and package pastes for them in their brand names. This will end what he described as ‘import of poison that is destroying people’s health and economy’.

“Full local production of tomato paste in Nigeria will not only create millions of jobs, it will also save us an enormous amount of foreign exchange,” he said.

Nigeria is uniquely blessed with a special climatic condition which allows for more than two tomato growing seasons in a year. However, the majority of tomato pastes in the country are imported from China.

BusinessDay earlier reported that in February 2015, the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) officials visited 27 main markets and four major supermarkets around Lagos and submitted tomato pastes bought at these places for laboratory analysis.

Three hundred and thirty samples were purchased by NAFDAC and submitted to the laboratory for analysis, but only 314 were eventually released. Out of 314 released, 286 of these tomato pastes from China, representing 91.1 percent, were found unsatisfactory in terms of tomato content. Only 28 returned satisfactory, even though both satisfactory and unsatisfactory tomato pastes had the same red colour.

The red colour in most of the tomato pastes indicates an addition of colour, which is prohibited, dangerous to health and shows that Chinese companies are merely adding colour, rather than the raw material called concentrates, into tomato pastes imported into Nigeria.

“We have huge stocks of finished products worth billions of naira in our warehouses which we are not selling due to dumping of these substandard brands of tomato paste from China that are cheap and filled with starch and colours,” the president of Erisco said.

“We have the capacity to employ over nine thousand Nigerians in our Lagos factory alone if government protects tomato paste industry,” he further said.

“There is also the need for the Central bank of Nigeria (CBN) to task our commercial banking sector to support the practical diversification of our economy now with very low interest rates,” he added.

Aminu Bisala, permanent secretary, Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, said Nigeria does not need to go outside to  get what it can produce locally.

“We spend $170 million on importation of 150 million metric tonnes of tomato. But local production of tomato will save Nigeria’s foreign exchange and create jobs,” Bisala, who represented Okechukwu Enalamah, minister for industry, trade and investment, said.

 

ODINAKA ANUDU

 

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