By Henry Uche
Following the short supply of crude palm oil and its high cost among other commodities, Akuland Group Limited, owner of Akuland Farms says efforts are on top gear to address Crude Palm Oil deficit in Nigeria and West Africa at large.
Executive Director of Akuland Group Limited, Hajia Salamatu Salisu, made this known while addressing newsmen at a press briefing organised by Akuland Farms to announce the recent acquisition of a 100 Hectares of palm plantation farm through a long term lease, to enable it meet up with the market demand of crude palm oil product in the African region.
According to Hajia Salisu, it is disheartening how Malaysia and Indonesia and other countries became world power on crude Palm oil supply, after picking the Palm oil seedlings from Nigeria many decades ago while Nigeria languishes in lack of Palm oil due to poor attention given to the sub sector of the Agricultural industry.
She maintained that Nigeria ought to be self sufficient in Palm oil produce and export same to other other countries for foreign revenue but negligence on the sector has cost the country huge sums. In other to curb this anomaly, the ED said, “Akuland Farms has made a great move on the 1st of January 2021. We have acquired through long term lease, a 100 Hectares palm plantation farm to enable us meet demand of our client base red oil customers in Nigeria and West Africa business region.
She explained that Akuland Farms have identified several ways of ensuring that the ratio of supply to demand is at equilibrium with an avenue for surplus, which can further address the issue of excess demand when the need arises. She said, “We are going to be planting high yielding varieties and we will also deploy the use of State- of -the -Art processing CPO machines among many others that are retarding the sector currently. It’s our aim to fix this particular challenge for our country and Africa at Large.
“You know the numerous challenges confronting the crude palm oil production sector of the country is what has resulted into a huge production deficit of about 500,000 metric tonnes if not more. This is why we are here to rise up from where we failed as our contemporaries in the pre-colonial era (Malaysia and Indonesia) have maximized production and developed their value chain, making them the largest suppliers of crude palm oil.”
She added that it’s the Firm’s resolve to complement the federal government’s effort on its (federal government) self-sufficiency policy in rice production through the indigenous ‘Mama Naija Premium Perboiled Rice’, noting that the Group is doing same with the palm oil industry so as to produce for our local consumption and export as well.
