Early this year, the Dangote urea fertiliser brand entered the market, a move that stakeholders expected would change the supply space and increase availability.
Mr Agbana Isaac Oladele, Assistant General Manager, Dangote Fertiliser Limited, spoke with Daily Trust on Sunday during the just concluded agric show along the Abuja-Keffi Expressway, on what their entrance into the market has done and their plans for the future.
He said farmers had been waiting for the arrival of Dangote urea, simply because of the age-long scarcity, which has been the nature of urea availability and affordability in the Nigerian market.
“With that, our arrival is more or less like a messiah that has just come to rescue the market from this trouble. And we are doing perfectly well because the background of our total installed annual capacity of 3 million metric tons we have is coming as a total solution for the scarcity problem,” Mr Oladele said.
Asked how they are faring in the market, the he said the report from farmers had been excellent as the performer of the product gives good results.
“Since we came in, we started selling in June 2021 and since our arrival in the market, it has been a very successful story. You can see that some of the farmers are just going out. They have been applauding this product. Ironically, you will even believe that it has suddenly turned into the most preferred product brand for urea brand in the market today,” he stated.
He further said farmers who had used other competing brands along with their product were changing their taste considering their product performance in the field.
“You see them opting for Dangote fertiliser, saying there is evidence in our bag and people can see what is inside, including the application. They said it’s not a kind of thing that would just disappear like that.
“The way they apply it gives them a long term effect. So it is a very good experience for us, and we really appreciate the way the marketers actually embraced the brand. It is a success we are trying to build on and we are going to sustain it,” he said, adding that one major problem farmers faced was the cost of fertiliser, which affected their access to the product.
He, however, explained what the company was doing to stabilise the price of the product in the market.
“Certainly, there is no way you can operate below your cost. So it is a question of finding a balance between cost and market pricing. In September or late August, one of our major competitors literally brought their pricing down from N9,700 to N9,500. They removed N200 because we refused to increase our price; and I think it is an additional benefit to the farmers. This means we are playing that stabilising role in the market.
“Be that as it may, there is no company that would want to operate below its cost. But we have the mind of making the farmers have full benefit from whatever they are getting from us,” he said.
He said the company had appointed distributors across the country to ensure that farmers, wherever they are, could access the product without hitches.
Oladele also explained what farmers should expect as we approach the 2022 farming season.
“What we want our customers to be very sure of is that we want to eliminate the perennial scarcity of fertiliser. So, with the capacity we have, we will eliminate that through steady supply of the product, regular availability, and even a very extensive distribution networking channel we have. There is no way they will have a problem accessing our brand. That assurance is there.
“Again, they are getting value for their money because our 50kg is 50kg; and that is what attracts the brand to farmers. When they see 50kg they celebrate it as 50kg. You cannot measure our 50kg and find 45kg,” he added.
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