Nigeria: Guinness Nigeria commits to local market, looking to increase capital investments

Chief Executive Officer, Guinness Nigeria Plc, John Musunga, has again reiterated that the company has no plan to leave the country and is rather looking to increase its capital investments and expanding production capacity, The Guardian Nigeria reported on October 18.

Chief Executive Officer, Guinness Nigeria Plc, John Musunga, has again reiterated that the company has no plan to leave the country and is rather looking to increase its capital investments and expanding production capacity.

“We have new equipment brought in last week to expand our spirit capacity having identified huge opportunities in our consumer products that our mainstream business here in Nigeria could tap into and expand upon; we’ll commission it next year,” he stated.

Musunga said that the recent announcement made by the company on the marketing of its imported finished products is to enable them concentrate on spirits manufactured locally in Nigeria. A new company would be charged with the importation and distribution of the finished spirit products in Nigeria from April next year.

According to him, the imported spirits represented just six per cent of the company’s yearly turnover but consumed 15 per cent of their FX demands, a situation, he said could not continue seeing as FX is scarce and keeps rising against the Naira.

“When the President announced new policies that resulted in currency devaluation, we were carrying huge foreign exchange exposure and this removed us from a very healthy profit position to making a N19 billion loss.

“By being very tactful of how we move these imported spirits around, it will free us to utilise the foreign exchange earned from our business and the little that we receive from the government to buy raw materials for manufacturing,” he stated.

According to him, they are not moving away from spirits totally but simply focusing on locally made ones. He expressed confidence that the measures taken by the government will bear fruits soon.

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