New, emerging, dominant players in Nigeria’s manufacturing
Chukwuemeka Obioma is Businessamlive Reporter.
You can contact him on chukwuemeka.obioma@businessamlive.com with stories and commentary.
Krusty Bread
A producer of bread and pastries, with a production capacity of 80 loaves per day, Krusty specializes in the distribution of freshly baked bread, delivering to customers directly without going through the usual distribution channel of middlemen. Faced with the peculiar challenges of the Nigerian market, it operates two outlets and hopes to have a firm grip on the market and carve a niche for itself.
Denna Rossi
Denna Rossi, a fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) manufacturer, boasts a variety of products, with assured quality for the Nigerian market. The products which are produced by the company are the Ivana fruit juice with seven variants- orange, mango, apple, apple plus pear, exotic, pineapple plus coconut, pineapple plus red grapefruit; Shappe fruit drinks and Clue vitamin beverage with three variants, namely lemon, apple and peach.
Denna Rossi is also a distributor of wines and cocktail drinks such as Domkeller red and white wine, Ibiza cocktail (red and white), Adelisa Champagne and Celine Red Wine (Non-alcoholic).
Dufil
Over the past 17 years in the Nigerian market, Dufil Group has had a remarkable impact on the Nigerian culinary landscape. With an array of products in its production kitty, and an accompanying brand appeal, Dufil is now working its appeal into Nigeria’s pastries market with its Minimie chin chin. The company is already widely known for its noodles favourite, Indomie, but its foray into this local crunchy snack, popularly called chin chin, means it is already positioning itself to maintain a sizeable share of this segment of the market. It’s also behind Power oil. Its first subsidiary and parent firm, De United Foods Industries Limited, which was commissioned in 1995 in Ota Ogun State, is the first instant noodles manufacturing plant in Nigeria and the largest in Africa.
The second factory; Dufil Prima Foods Plc, which was commissioned in 2001 is located in Choba, Port Harcourt, Rivers State from where it produces its Minimie brand.
The third and most recent state of the art automation factory was commissioned in Kaduna on the 29th of May 2012.
Innoson Vehicle Manufacturing (IVM)
It all began in 1978, in a commercial town situated in the eastern part of Nigeria, called Nnewi, once known as a hub for motorcycle importation. Activities at Nnewi then were reminiscent of the prevailing situation in the automobile market where tokunbo (foreign used) cars hold sway. According to a recent research by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the ratio of brand new automobiles to foreign used ones on Nigerian road is 1: 131. This finding implies that for every brand new car on the Nigerian road, there are as many as 131 used cars.
The situation in Nnewi would have continued unabated but for the intervention of a 25-year old Nigerian at the time, named Innocent Chukwuma, the founder of Innoson Motors (IVM).
Driven by his passion for people and his core business philosophy of bringing down costs and passing the gain to customers, he pioneered the first Made-in-Nigeria motorcycle brand that sold for as low as N60,000. Currently, the automobile firm is a proud producer of varied brands of vehicles, including 14-seater buses. It is a widely held belief that IVM is poised to drive tokunbo (foreign used) vehicles out of Nigeria and may keep them out forever if the proverbial Nigerian odds don’t work against the company.
The company is relentlessly manufacturing durable and affordable brand new automobiles for Africans. New automobiles are selling for almost the cost of their tokunbo equivalents. And they are tested and proven to be as good as any foreign automobile brand around.