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Dangote plant to resume production January 2019
On 17 October, the Vice President of Nigeria Agribusiness Group, Emmanuel Ijewere, said the Dangote tomato processing plant and three other firms would resume production by January 2019.
He added that the move would encourage indigenous companies at par to effectively compete with importers of tomato paste. Ijewere alleged that most of the tomato processing companies initially were shut down because the Nigeria Customs Service was not implementing the policy, which made it cheaper to import tomato paste from China and Italy. According to him, the NCS will commence full implementation of New Tomato Production Policy, which will give room to those firms to resume business.
He added that the move would encourage indigenous companies at par to effectively compete with importers of tomato paste. Ijewere alleged that most of the tomato processing companies initially were shut down because the Nigeria Customs Service was not implementing the policy, which made it cheaper to import tomato paste from China and Italy. According to him, the NCS will commence full implementation of New Tomato Production Policy, which will give room to those firms to resume business.
According to him, none of the tomato grown in the country is being converted to tomato paste. Ijewere said it was cheaper for the tomato processing plant to import from abroad, noting that the yield coming from farmers was not enough to serve the tomato factories. He added that none of the twelve factories that had discussion with Nigeria AgriBusiness Group were able to process tomato from Nigeria, adding that most of their factories were designed to import the paste into the country, “add water into the paste, put in the sachet and sell them out “.
Source: theeagleonline.com.ng
