By Chijioke Okoronkwo
The Royal FrieslandCampina, WAMCO, makers of peak milk, will invest 23 million Euros in fresh milk production in Nigeria, its Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Mr Hein Schumacher has said.
Schumacher, who led a team from the company to a meeting with Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo on Friday in Abuja, said the firm had operated in Nigeria for 45 years.
The CEO told journalists that the meeting with the vice president centred on how the firm would improve its operations in Nigeria and how government could encourage the firm.
“ We discussed our presence in Nigeria; we have been here since 1973; we operate the Peak brands and I am sure that every Nigerian has grown up with the peak milk and we are very proud of that.
“What we discussed is not only how we can be successful now, but how we can also be successful in the future and what that means.
“The vice president asked us to continue to invest in local dairy farming to increase local production of milk and that’s something we like.
“We are very happy with this request and we will definitely take forward, programmes that we have been running; we are going to expand them.
“We are investing around 23 million Euros in new facilities in order to have fresh milk for the consumer, you need local production; you cannot import fresh milk from Europe,’’ he said.
He said that the company had been successful in the last couple of years with dairy development, noting that the yield for cow was improving very quickly.
Schumacher said that two of the firm’s farmers attended the meeting, adding that they had been able to increase their yield from two kilogrammes of milk production per day to 10 kilogrammes per day.
According to him, such improvement is needed to make the country self-sufficient in production.
On his part, Mr Ben Lengard, the Managing Director, Friesland and WAMCO Nigeria, said that they came to update the presidency on the programme the company had in Nigeria.
“We give an update on how we have been doing the good things and the challenges we face in this part of the country.
“The main interest of these conversations surround the challenges we have in the dairy development programme.
“ We talked a lot about the dairy development programme of which we are the first multinational company in Nigeria to go into local dairy development,’’ he said.
He said that the vice president had given his commitment to supporting the company.
