NIGERIA – FrieslandCampina WAMCO Nigeria, an affiliate of Royal FrieslandCampina in the Netherlands, has opened a new milk collection center in the South West of Nigeria on the campus of Bowen University.

This was revealed by Jeroen Elfers, Corporate Director Dairy Development & Milk Streams at FrieslandCampina on a LinkedIn post, indicating that the institution of higher learning is also building a dairy farm for training purposes.

The university dairy farm will also deliver its milk to the Nigerian dairy processing company, as part of its sustainable dairy value chain model named Dairy Development Programme (DDP), which was launched in 2010.

FrieslandCampina WAMCO’s DDP currently operates in various communities across the South West and Northern parts of Nigeria covering Oyo, Osun, Ogun, Kwara and Niger States, indicates Vanguard.

The DDP focuses on working with pastoralists, smallholder dairy farmers and commercial farms, with support from various partners such as IFDC-2SCALE, Bles Dairies, Wageningen University, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) and the Central Bank of Nigeria.

Through the programme, local farmers are supported in the production of milk (yield per cow improvement), improving milk quality and hygiene, feeding, breeding and farm management.

Nigeria targets to increase milk production from the current 600,000 metric tonnes to 1,700,000 metric tonnes by 2024

The locally sourced milk from these farmers is collected through the company’s Milk Collection Centers (MCC) which are about 28 in number (with total capacity of 85,000 Litres), then transported to the WAMCO processing facility to produce a wide range of dairy products.

This is line with its grass to glass philosophy which seeks to ensure quality from the grass the cows feed on to the glass of milk taken by consumers.

In 2019, the government intensified efforts on backward integration of the dairy sector and assigned land to various dairy companies including FrieslandCampina WAMCO.

FrieslandCampina WAMCO entered into a joint agreement (MoU) with the government of Niger State concerning a dairy project at the Bobi Grazing Reserve in the State and signed up for a 40-year lease contract representing 10,000 hectares of land at the Reserve.

The company’s expansion plan also necessitated the construction of a State-of-the-Art ready-to-drink factory that processes yoghurt from 100% locally sourced milk in Nigeria in 2020.

It further expanded its capacity with the acquisition of Nutricima’s dairy business from PZ Cussons Nigeria Plc for an undisclosed sum.

Further strengthening its commitment to leading the charge towards sustainable dairy development and human capacity building in the 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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