Nigeria’s agricultural industry and packaging industry has experienced massive opportunities for growth as the 9th edition of the Agrofood and PlastPrintPack’s International Trade Show and Conference was held in Lagos.
The trade show, which was organised by Fair Trade, was held from the 26th to the 28th of March in Landmark Centre, Lagos.
The trade show attracted different agricultural, packaging and processing companies from around the world, with companies from China, Belgium, South Africa, India, amongst many others in attendance.
Also in attendance was Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK), and the Kingdom of Netherlands, who organized several companies from their countries to exhibit their products at the trade show.
A representative of Fair Trade, speaking about the event said, “All these companies are here exhibiting from all over the world. I think we have over 15 different countries here from the exhibitor side, and most of them are already in business in Nigeria.
“Some of them are looking for business in Nigeria and so they’re trying to meet up with local visitors from Nigeria to start the business, make conversation and get in contact with the people here.
“It’s a rising country. I mean, from my team, I know that from visitor side, like for example the past three years, it gets very much better. Like there were a lot of visitors who were very valuable. So, I think the interest from the businesses here in the country, it’s increasing and it’s getting more important for the local businesses here to get in contact with companies who are like in the in the business for a long time. So, they have a lot of knowledge, and they can help to increase the businesses here.”
A representative of the German Consul, Daniel Dellemann, expressed enthusiasm about the potential business opportunities that could come from the exhibition as he said, “It should be a win-win situation. In the end, I think that in Nigeria there’s still a lot of opportunities, potential, and actually and just the need to grow production and grow, actually the whole value chain. So, it starts with agriculture, right?
“But then also you have the food processing in the right packaging, because ultimately, you can promote agriculture and grow a lot of things, but you need to reduce post harvest loss. You need to make food durable, right? So, by processing it and putting it into right package, you actually make it safer to transport.
“You actually make it more durable so people actually can use the food that’s been grown over a longer time, a long period, actually, can kind of extend the lifetime, the shelf time, and people can enjoy it and people get access to the food that they need.”
Dellemann then said that these trade shows have increased interest in Nigeria’s agriculture industry as he said, “I was already impressed how good the trade shows were done, you know, quality of the visitors and just, you know, being able to talk to people, just nice people just have discussions, it was great. And this year really it’s even gotten bigger.
“I think there’s more people, more exhibitors. And to me, it really just showed that there’s- two things actually. There’s a high demand from the Nigerian side to acquire good quality technology and you know, just boosting the production in the country and the industry.
“And on the other side, there is definitely an increasing interest, increasing perception in Germany and Europe from companies there that you know they should look definitely into Nigeria and see if there’s some opportunities there and how they can collaborate with partners here in the market.”
Also, ADECO, a Nigerian processing and packaging company who exhibited its products and services at the exhibition, said, “It’s good we are having such exhibition, because right from when it started on Tuesday, we have been opportune to meet different classes of people, we’ve been opportune to also sell our businesses, tell people what we do, and at least I can testify to it that calls are already coming, clients are already engaging, now we already have appointments to visit some of these visitors to see how we can help them optimize their processes and see how their business moves on as expected.”
Ozioma Samuel-Ugwuezi
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