‘How accessing raw material is affecting my oil biz’
Hajiya Habiba Sule Dalhatu is the owner of Pelican Oil, a company that produces variety of cooking oils ranging from groundnut oil, soya beans, palm, to coconut and palm kernel oil at the Technology Incubation Centre in Tarauni Local Government Area of Kano State. Her business got a boost when she won a You Win award and got N7.5 million.
A retired lawyer, HajiyaHabiba said she ventured into oil production to fulfill her retirement plans. She started production in 2014 and is having no fewer than 15 staff on her payroll.
She disclosed that she started production just for her domestic work, and from it she used to give some out to her friends. Satisfied by the quality of the oil, people started coming to beg her for some more, saying her palm oil was different from the one in the market.
“This propelled me to start thinking of converting it to a business. I realised then that there was no single person that was producing palm oil in the northwestern part of the country. From then, I swung into business. I started with N10, 000,” she said.
She added that the business got a boost when she won a You Win award and got N7.5 million. “With this grant I put up the structure, bought the necessary machines and other infrastructure and then started the oil production at this site that was allocated to me by the Technology Incubation Centre.”
HajiyaHabiba said she was able to access the site at the incubation centre due to her intention to add value to her products. “I’m thinking of converting the palm oil to vegetable oil,“she said.
The desire to provide pure cooking oil to the society free of all forms of adulteration is what pushed her into oil production. “My motto is oil in its pure form. I want people to access organic oil in the market without much ado,” she said.
Gradually, she increased her production by adding other cooking oils such as groundnut oil, coconut, soya beans and palm kernel oil.
Asked how she accessed her raw material for the oil production, she said she gets groundnut and soya beans in Kano and from Jigawa state while for palm kernel, she gets it from Kogi State.
Sustaining the business is the greatest challenge she is facing. She said though she had sold all her assets to sustain the business, she still faced the problem of accessing raw material and how to remain afloat in the midst of the current inflation.
“If I have enough funds, I can make large purchases of the raw material and keep producing but as it is now, even the cost of transporting the raw material is high. Sometimes I have to order for the complete processing of the oil there in Kogi. After buying a palm kernel farm we refine it here and then package it,” she said.
“When I started production, I was selling a gallon of groundnut oil for N1,200 but now, it sells for N3000.
Apart from, the problem of accessing raw material, she said, another bottleneck was recovering her money from dealers that the oil was supplied to. “You have to struggle hard to get back your money after making the supply. I cannot pay my workers salary because the little money I have in hand will not be adequate and we have not been able to get back our money from those we supply oil to,” she lamented.
She could not approach the bank for loan to boost her business because of the interest charged on loans which, she said, was against her religious teachings.