Nigeria Aviation Handling Company Plc (nahcoaviance), has on Wednesday started the exportation of food items to Europe under its new subsidiary, NAHCO Food and Beverages Limited.
It commenced the exportation of fresh pepper after being certified by the Nigeria Agricultural Quarantine Service (NAQS) and after consultation with foreign food standards agencies.
The initiative has been described by analysts as one that would revolutionalise the way Nigeria’s produce are packaged for foreign markets.
NAHCO said this feat would be the first by any major operator at the airport and that it comes on the back of aggressive push by the federal government for increased export of Nigeria products.
It said the new export business by the company is in conjunction with its appointed partners to export the first batch of the exports consisting of high grade fresh Nigerian pepper.
Group Managing Director/CEO, nahcoaviance, Mr. Indranil Gupta, said the development was coming at a time when quite a number of stakeholders had identified packaging as a major challenge for Nigerian exports.
He added that the Company is doing a lot to assist local producers of agricultural produce in realizing their dreams of exporting quality commodities to markets in Europe, America and Asia.
“We appreciate the hard work some of our farmers put into producing their goods. NAHCO is trying to support them export these products so as to make these efforts more worthwhile for them. It is also a way of generating scarce foreign exchange for the country,” Gupta stated.
Explaining the process which led to the commencement of the food exports, the Senior Business Development Manager, New Business, nahcoaviance, Mr. Emmanuel Illah, pointed out that the project is part of NAHCO’s larger expansion strategy driven by three major objectives: Growth, Risk Reduction and Profitability.
According to Illah, the GMD/CEO of the company, Indranil Gupta, drove the initiative and have provided support and technical know-how so far.
Disclosing plans by the company to onboard new consignees/offtakers, Illah said: “The marketing campaign and planned roadshow will take care of this. We plan to expand the product range substantially in due course to accommodate the requests from the diaspora markets.”
Credit: ThisDay
