NIGERIA – Dutch multinational dairy cooperative FrieslandCampina, is strengthening local dairy production in Nigeria by building a mobile yoghurt plant.

The facility will enable the company to process milk from local dairy farmers into long-life yoghurt drinks.

It will start with a processing capacity of 1.8 million kilograms of milk and can annually produce more than 18 million pouches of drinking yogurt.

The processing capacity can be rapidly scaled up, the company notes, and expects to begin operations during the first quarter of 2022.

The project is part of the Dairy Development Programme that supports local farmers to increase their milk production, improve the quality of the milk and offer them access to the market.

This, according to the dairy giant, contributes to stronger value chains, a stronger economy and good nutrition for the local population.

Jeroen Elfers, Corporate Director Dairy Development and Milk Streams at FrieslandCampina, explains, “With this mobile dairy plant we help thousands of local Nigerian farmers by ensuring the sales of their milk and, consequently, their income.

“We are also creating jobs and provide the population with nutritious and affordable dairy products. In this way, we are cooperating with the Nigerian government in providing food for the rapidly growing population.” 

The plant consists of five interlinked containers and was built by Scherjon Dairy Equipment and Onesto Construction in Surhuisterveen and Drachten (Netherlands) respectively.

The five 40 ft containers will soon be shipped to Nigeria. As soon as the containers arrive at their destination, they will be interlinked, and the yoghurt production can be started.

Milk from local dairy farmers will be used for the yoghurt, with this mobile yoghurt plant extending FrieslandCampina’s processing capacity in the West African country.

With 200 million inhabitants, Nigeria is an important market to FrieslandCampina, with Peak being the best-known brand of FrieslandCampina in Nigeria.

The company had its own dairy plant in Nigeria since 1974 through its West Africa milk company, FrieslandCampina WAMCO.

In 2020, FrieslandCampina WAMCO acquired the dairy company Nutricima from PZ Cussons and with this obtained a second processing location in the South-west of Nigeria and became the owner of, among others, the NuNu brand.

Further strengthening its commitment to leading the charge towards sustainable dairy development and human capacity building in the Nigeria dairy sector, FrieslandCampina WAMCO in partnership with URUS, Barenbrug and Agrifirm, recently set up a strategic partnership tagged ‘Value4Dairy’.

The consortium is aimed to bring knowledge, high quality products and long-term farming improvements to Nigeria’s dairy sector.

Nigeria targets to increase milk production from the current 600,000 metric tonnes to 1,700,000 metric tonnes by 2024, in a bid to reduce the US$1.5 billion dairy importation bill incurred by the country annually.

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