Akoma Chinweoke
7 September 2008
interview
Mr. Fred A. S. Uwheraka, is the CEO of Frijay Consult Limited, a company established in 2004 as an Agro Allied Enterprise with key interest in creating additional value to cottage industries, particularly in agro products both for local and international markets. In this interview, he speaks on his vision to emerge as a foremost nourishment and comfort provider to humanity through agro-processing and product marketing as well as how application of economies of scale can ensure adequate returns on investment. Excerpts.
HOW would you describe your experience so far in the business of adding value to agro products?
Well right from the onset we were driven by a passionate desire to create value in anything we touched. We did not want to go into what everybody was doing but to do something that would significantly stay beyond us in terms of identity and we would be able to stand clear from the society. In my line of business, I like competition as it makes you stronger and also makes you to really be on your toes. Our success factor is based primarily on passion. We have had our peak and lows but at the same time we continue to be happy anytime we achieve success. So, Frijay has today metamorphose from Frijay enterprises to a limited liability company and we have been very lucky in the business of adding value to Agro-products.
We process agro-products to create a room for it to last for a long space of time in terms of preservation for the consumer. So, it can maintain a taste of the kind of agro-product you want over time knowing fully well that in Nigeria today like every other parts of the world, agro-products after harvest, post harvest remains the problem. So, we have been able to leverage most of our clients who are now farmers from guaranteeing post harvest and at the same time guaranteeing return on investment in Agriculture. That has drawn us very close to the government somewhere along the line and individuals who are into mass production of agro-products.
So, that is basically what we do. In terms of nomenclature we have divided ourselves into three segments. One of them has to do with fish and cray fish products. Then the next one is taking advantage of food crops that can be harnessed into flower that can be used to make molds. Garri on its own as you does not mean much to anybody unless those who are from Ijebu. But from where we come from you convert garri into a mould and they would call it Eba and of course somebody has to bring that garri to that stage. The local farmers are able to do it to the best of their knowledge but it has a short life span. What we have done is to spread that lifespan to make sure the garri remains available more than one year guaranteed.
So, the same way we get into the issue of yam, poundo, amala, beans floor, ground rice, and the favorite dish for diabetes today which is the unripe plantain which we now convert to plantain flour and the wheat. These products each has a segment in the market. In posturing we think we are satisfying the middle to high network mass of the society and we are proud to say we are recognized because of that. We look forward to start exporting our products to our brothers abroad who desire to eat very good Nigeria foods and to their host who some where along the line have a taste for Nigerian foods. We export presently into US and some other few countries like Dubai and Kenya where Nigerians reside.
How has the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGO A), an American initiative impacted on your business?
We must thank the government of America for trying to help Africa. The AGO Act was actually aimed at encouraging Africans to produce for export and not just marketing for the sake of marketing. Create what they call comparative advantage from your environment and produce and export. It is a mix grill of consumers, how much of your own contributions can come to meet the consumers who are Americans who in diaspora where either from Nigeria or any part of the world. What is happening now is that other countries in other continents are taken advantage of export into US as Nigerians and Africans are having difficulties in producing mass production for the American market.
So, the Act was done to try and encourage Nigerians in particular to develop brands, product services that the American consumers would like to take because of the beauty of our tropical weather which has a comparative need for their own requirement. If you go to America, there are some part of the tropical climate where the food basket for them is not enough. So, they want additional volume and the act strictly was to encourage the importation of products into America but the buyer does not pay import duty so that your product becomes competitive against the global market. This is so because the challenges you encounter when you produce from Africa are so much particularly as energy is on the lower ebb, and technology is low too.
So, anything that you want to do, it becomes costlier. If you realize
that Japanese today are making vehicles for you, at the subsistence level, they are using robots and then you have manuals. With robot you can do large scale production and the economics of scale would reduce your cost of production but we are still in the arms chair production system that makes cost of each product expensive.
They know this and they believe that the only way to encourage mass production was to encourage this kind of Act so that we can compete. Once the awareness have increased, over time you leverage. My company saw that opportunity and said look, how can we compete with the Asian Tigers and we found the window of the AGOA and we say okay, lets produce our products, tell the American government we are going to export to you. The American government now said anything you bring from Nigeria, can it come in under the scheme and we said we are ready. All we need to do is to make sure the product meet their standard and that we have achieved.
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