The Minister of Trade and Investment, Dr Doris Uzoka-Anite and Governor Dapo Abiodun on Tuesday inaugurated two factories in Ogun State, an expansion of the Tropical General Investments (TGI) Group, a global conglomerate operating in Africa, Middle East and Asia.
The factories – the West Africa Cubes Limited and the West African Soy Industries Limited (WASIL) – located at Sagamu interchange, Ogun State, worth $130million investments.
Uzoka-Anite and Governor Abiodun, as well as the Chairman of TGI Group, Cornelis Vink, Farouk Gumel, the Group Executive Director and Vice Chairman, Africa and other top echelons of TGI Group commissioned the multimillion dollars factories shortly after a brief ceremony held at Flowergate Mixed Development Scheme, Sagamu, Ogun State.
The Minister, in her remarks, said the factories were in line with President Bola Tinubu’s blueprint to tackle the myriad of challenges confronting Nigeria’s economy.
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“The challenge of unemployment, pressure on Foreign Exchange and economic diversification is one that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is determined to tackle conclusively.
“Manufacturing and value chain addition or value addition is necessary for the overall development of our country, there is no way around it, the cause of inaction is huge and we cannot afford it,” She said.
Uzoka-Anite expressed the Federal Government’s commitment to tackle roadblocks affecting the manufacturing and other sectors of the nation’s economy.
“We still want to encourage you to continue in your investment and continue to grow in size and scope. All we can do is continue to assure you of our support and we will do all that we can to make sure more investments like this happen across the country,” the Minister added.
Abiodun, on his part, noted that the new factories have shown that the ease of doing business policy in Ogun State has yielded good results.
He described the TGI group as a “classical example of success story of Ogun State,” and a reference point to other industries in Nigeria.
The Executive Director of TGI, Deepanjan Roy, said the two factories were worth an investment of $130million.
Roy said the West Africa Cubes Limited has capacity of 54,000 tonnes which represents 11 percent of Nigeria’s demand, while the West African Soy Industries Limited has facility to process 25,000 tonnes of soybean, shea and palm kernel annually.
“Most importantly, 80 percent of what we use is actually locally available. And interestingly, some of the ingredients we are actually producing ourselves,” Roy said.
He explained that the factories would bridge the gap of unemployment, importation among others.
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