NB expands backward integration projects to source more inputs locally

In view of uncertainties in the foreign exchange market and the need to bolster local production, Nigeria’s biggest brewer Nigerian Breweries (NB) Plc is expanding its backward integration project to source more raw materials locally.

The brewer has deepened its partnership with local entrepreneurs and farmers to harness huge value chain from its backward integration policy.

Patrick Olowokere, corporate communications and brand public relations manager, said the company was consolidating its local sourcing of inputs for its operations and had fast-tracked plan to attain 60 per cent local input sourcing in 2018 as against the initial 2020 target.

During a tour of Psaltry International Limited, one of Nigerian Breweries’ major raw material suppliers, in Alayide village, Ado Awaiye near Iseyin, Oyo State, Olowokere said that the strategy was to identify organisations that could produce raw materials and ancillary products as inputs for its business.

He said these organisations would be supported and provided with the guarantee of a ready market for their products.

He said the company had also made progress in increasing the supply of sorghum used for some of its beverages as more than 100,000 metric tonnes of the cereal was annually sourced locally.

“Over 250,000 farmers spread across several agronomic zones in the North have been impacted by our sorghum value chain program as at 2013,” he said.

NB has since 2015, been working with Psaltry International Limited, a local cassava processing company, to optimise the cassava value chain in the country by providing industrial quality cassava starch to extract maltose syrup for use in its brewing process.

Oluyemisi Iranloye, MD/CEO of the firm, said the firm had  created a supply chain involving up to 5,000 farm families which included more than 2,000 registered and unregistered out grower farm families, marketers,  transporters and retail input suppliers.

Iranloye said the company had saved the nation more than $7million in foreign exchange in the past two years through local provision of processed cassava starch for industrial use.

ODINAKA ANUDU