NIGERIA – The outgoing Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Guinness Nigeria Plc, Mr. Seni Adetu, has said the producer of both alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages developed stronger portfolio in the past three years.

Adetu, who said this during an interactive session with journalists in Lagos, pointed out that Guinness Nigeria has also developed value brands that are currently market leaders.

“On the road to consumers in terms of distribution, we have started a project that was really directed to enhance the quality of our distribution and to make sure that we expand into places that hitherto we were not able to reach.

“I am also proud of the fact that we have completed the capacity expansion programme.

It cost the company a lot of money, but we have completed it. I am aware that people have talked about the performance of the company in terms of the financial results.

“But I just want to emphasis what we had said before. As a company, when you go and take borrowings to invest in a major expansion programme like the one we embarked on that cost us N2 billion, normally, it is expected a few years after, you are going to be paying finance charges as interest on the borrowed loans and the capacity we have built is the capacity that goes for between five and 10 years and it takes time before you wrap it up to the maximum,” he explained.

Adetu said, as a Nigerian, he is proud to be leaving Guinness Nigeria without any case of fraud. He stated that corporate governance standard in the company was also improved under his watch.

“I am really holding my head high in terms of the fact that in my period here, there was no single case of fraud, there were no issues about integrity and our governance standards and reputation of the company has improved and that makes me feel so good.

“But I just want to put it into perspective that one of the reasons we have seen the bottom-line sort of struggle over the last few years is because of some of the finance charges we are putting through our operations.

“The good thing is that from our first quarter results, you will see that we have turned the business around. So, I am leaving at a time the business has started growing again and I am really pleased with that,” he added.

November 1, 2014; http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/guinness-nigeria-has-developed-stronger-portfolio-says-adetu/192736/

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