Akwa Ibom manufacturing firm eyes West African market to boost foreign exchange earnings

Jubilee Syringe Manufacturing company in Awa, Akwa Ibom State says it is expanding its market reach to cover the West African sub-region to gain optimally from its daily production of one million syringes and to boost foreign exchange earnings.

The company, which began operations barely three years ago, has a production capacity of 1.5 million syringes daily and is diversifying into the manufacturing of Personal Protection Equipment such as facemasks, hand gloves and single needles in response to the coronavirus outbreak.

Akin Oyediran, managing director of the company in an interview with BDSUNDAY, said expanding into the West African regional market would help the company to earn foreign exchange and to benefit from incentives by the Nigerian Export Promotion Council.

“We employing the locals, we are training them, it is a sustainable company, we are doing very well in terms of market reach, our market reach is throughout Nigeria and West Africa, we are expanding into different products. For a company that is just three years old, it is a success story,’’ he said.

“The reason we are focusing on exportation is because of foreign exchange, the current exchange rate of the dollar makes it quite attractive and every dollar of products we export we get some incentives from the Nigerian Export Promotion Council,” he added.

Oyediran, who allayed fears of the company being sustainable, identified dependenceongovernments by firms as one of the reasons firms fold up, adding that the company has remained selfsustainable since it began production.

“By the time, start ups run for two or three years and enjoying tax holidays from the government, with many things happening in the market including the value of the Naira which happens every three years, it makes some companies to fold up.