‘I like the can-do spirit of Nigerians’

Rob Kiers, Managing Director, Nutreco Africa and Skretting Nigeria speaks on his organisation’s foray into Nigeria, the potentials of the newly launched 10,000 tonnes capacity catfish feed plant in Ibadan and his love for the average Nigerian can-do spirit. He spoke with Gboyega Alaka

Nutreco and Skretting, how did the partnership begin?

Skretting is a very old family company in Norway, almost 150 years old. It’s a family name and they started producing feeds in the 1890s. Later it became part of BP Nutrition; and then in 1994, BP decided to divest; and then Nutreco, a Dutch company was formed. Within Nutreco, we have Skretting focusing on fish and Trouw Nutrition, focusing on other animals like dairies and pigs. Nutreco is an abbreviation; it stands for Nutrition, Economy and Ecology. Then in 1997, we went to the stock exchange in the Netherlands, so it was a listed company for many years. But since last year, we’ve been back into family hands because a large Dutch company bought into the shares of the company. So Nutreco is nothing more than a mother company of Skretting.

Coming to Nigeria, what was the attraction for Skretting?

We have been in Nigeria for quite some years dealing in the export of fishfeed. We were working with Durante, founded by the late Ade Alakija. He was also at the foundation of Skretting in Nigeria. He and my colleague, Hans Vink started the business together because one of the things that was lacking in Nigeria was good quality fishfeed. So they started to bring fishfeed into Nigeria, produced in Europe (France) and the business started growing. Then sometimes last year, Durante shareholders approached us to see if we could do something together here locally to produce fish feed. Interestingly that was about two years ago and now we have this plant.

What’s the capacity of this new plant?

It’s around 10,000 tonnes of feed per annum.

How far do you think this will go in meeting the needs of the Nigerian catfish market?

To be honest, the 10,000 tonnes is still small compared to the size of the market.  The Nigerian market has enormous potentials because the Nigerian people like to eat catfish; it’s part of the culture, which is also very important, because you cannot force people to eat fish. Growth in fish farming has improved potentially over the years, but there’s still a lot of improvement that  can be made and in the area of good quality feed as well. This plant is the first step but we’re anticipating to do more investments here by way of extending this plant or maybe build more plants. The plant runs on 24 hours a day basis.

Do you have a set target in the next few years?

Yes, this plant cannot do more than 10,000 tonnes, so building a new plant will take at least another one and half years. Our goal is to increase to say 50,000 tonnes in the near future and we believe the Nigerian market can easily absorb them.

Why situate the plant in Ibadan? Why not Lagos for instance?

There are a couple of reasons for that. The first obviously is because Durante is located here. But having said that, Ibadan is also strategically located in Nigeria. It’s the heart of the agricultural sector in Nigeria; it’s not too far from Lagos, especially with the new road being constructed. It’s also assessable to the north. So it’s a fine location.

What’s your position in Skretting?

My name is Rob Kiers, I head Nutreco in Africa, which means I’m the MD of Skretting in Nigeria. However, we have Seyi Adeleke-Ige, who is the local MD; she reports to me. Next to Nigeria, we have a company in Egypt, which is under my management, where we produce a hundred thousand tonnes of fishfeed. We’re investing at this moment in Zambia; and we have offices in Kenya and South Africa. In total, I think we have about 350 people in our employ across Africa.

How do you source your raw materials?

About 60% of our raw materials are sourced locally in Nigeria. It’s made from soya and by-products of cassava, from rice; the only things we’re still importing is high quality protein. Our goal is to not depend on imports but to source our raw materials as much as possible locally.

How healthy is the end-product – talking about the catfish; considering that there have been massive campaigns that bred fish are not healthy, since they’re fed with a lot of chemicalised food?

I believe they’re very healthy because the raw materials are natural. We make a diet based on corn, soya and cassava, which are things that you also eat. So there is no problem there. I believe farming fish is one of the most efficient ways of creating protein, especially catfish. You need less than a kilo of feed to produce a kilo of catfish – I think that’s quite amazing. Compare that to a chicken, where you need about 1.8 kilo of feed to produce one kilo of chicken meat. Catfish also does not need a lot of water, so with proper management, you should get reward on your investment and effort.

What’s the staff strength of Skretting Nigeria?

When we started last year, we had about 25 people; right now we have about 75 people; and they are all local people. Management are all local people; we believe that when you want to run a business in a country like Nigeria or any other country in the world, you need local people because they know how to operate the company best. But we combine that with our international experience. We have specialists coming in here and training the people on different aspects; talking about finance, production and nutrition.

Do you offer expert advice to your customers?

I believe that those who engage in fish farming should take it serious. You have to love the fish, take them seriously, buy good quality feed and then take it as a profession. Thereafter,  it will flourish very well.

What do you like about Nigerians?

There are a couple of things; the first of course is the market. There are huge potentials in the market, driven of course by a couple of things. Catfish is important in the diet of Nigerians, so there is a habit of eating fish and we don’t have to start inculcating that. Then there are close to 200million people here, and the expectation is that the population could grow to half a billion. So there are quite a lot of mouths to feed. From that perspective, there is no doubt that the size of the market is big.

On the other hand, I also like very entrepreneurial spirit of Nigerians. They’ve simply got this mentality that there is not one problem that they are unable to find a solution to. I like that çan-do spirit a lot and I think it is embedded in the culture of the people. So the three things I like are the people’s hardworking nature, problem-solving attitude and their entrepreneurial spirit.

What’s your management style?

In essence, what we try to do is give a lot of power locally.  So we empower the local management to take decisions. So what we try to do is support management. I cannot manage a company here in Nigeria because of course I’m not Nigerian. So in my opinion, we need somebody who knows the market, understands the market, understands how it goes and knows what to do.