A nation that can’t feed itself is dead — RUFUS OLOPADE

Engineer Rufus Olopade is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Sabina Pad Enterprises Limited, a limited liability company specialising in providing top quality livestock feeds, aquaculture feeds, poultry feeds, dog feeds, raw materials as well as sales of poultry and fishery equipment.

Sabina Pad was founded by Engr. Olopade and his wife, Mrs Sabina Olopade, a trained teacher who is the Managing Director in charge of sales, handling distributors around the country.

In this chat with Financial Vanguard, the duo spoke on what motivated them to go into the business, the challenges and more.

Excerpts:

According to Engr. Rufus Olopade, a Mechanical Engineer, they got into fish feed business because of their love for country and people. “We realised that a nation that cannot feed itself is dead so, we went to the University of Ibadan to learn more about feed production business and how we can manage it properly because when you don’t have the knowledge, it will be very difficult to succeed.

So we did agric management. We got into fish feed production in 1989. At inception, we were into local feeds but we discovered that Nigerians needed more, especially fish and poultry farmers so we decided it was better for us to go into floating feed production instead of importing because with importation and payment of duty, there is no much profit for the customers.

“After production, there are distributors and marketers. We looked at that and concluded that it will help the nation instead of just thinking of profit alone, you think of others and that was the major reason we dabbled into the business.”

Said Mrs Olopade: “The business was named after me. We both agreed that the name should be Sabina Pad, ie Sabina Olopade.

I am a trained teacher but I have special interest in agriculture so I started on a small scale and then I told my husband to join me when he retired.

We started since 1994, selling agric raw materials and in 1999, we registered the company as Sabina Pad Enterprises Limited so we started selling all the raw materials and producing feed locally.

“We do feed milling for people too. If anybody who wants to go into small farming comes to us with his formulation, we do the formulation for them.”

Going into production:

“We graduated to selling imported feed but when people started complaining that they were not making profit, we began producing pelletized feed.

When the complaints of not making gains continued, we decided that we should buy the floating feed extruder. We took a bank loan to do that but the interest rate was so high that we were unable to meet demands and that loan nearly destroyed us.

Thank God we got somebody that helped us at Stanbic IBTC with small loan for the installation of the machine and other things. At the end of the day, we had no money to buy raw materials for production,” said Mrs Olopade.

Added Engr. Olopade: “We felt that the raw materials are abundant in Nigeria so all we needed was the machine. So we bought the extruder machine and we have started production.”

“We are producing locally now instead of importing from US or Europe. All we need now is assistance in terms of funds to be able to buy enough raw materials. So far, so good,” he said, adding: “We are doing all this so that we will have enough food in Nigeria and also create jobs.

Many of our graduates are unemployed and agribusiness requires large number of workers – accountants, machine operators, loaders, extruder operators, distributors, etc. As at now, we run two shifts with about 100 workers and almost all of them are graduates.”

Challenges:

Engr. Olopade said that apart from paucity of funds and high interest rate on bank loans, other challenges include dishonesty amongst staff and crisis in the north.

“Right now, we don’t have enough raw materials to produce because during the harvest period when the raw materials were relatively cheap, we needed a lot of money to buy in bulk and store but we could not do that so there is no way we can produce at a cheap rate.

During the harvest, if you are able to get as much raw materials as possible and store, you can produce at a cheaper rate and sell at a cheaper rate too.

On the other hand, if you are buying one or two trucks, there is no way you can produce at a cheap rate. That is why we need assistance from industrialists in form of funding so that we will be able to get the raw materials at very cheap rate.”

“We lack materials, the ones we are using now were bought in the retail market; we could not buy in bulk due to paucity of funds. If we had enough money, we would go up north and purchase in bulk during harvest,” added Mrs Olopade.

Asked if the crisis in the north does not affect business, the Chairman said: “It is affecting business a little, not much because we have customers who are already well established in the north.

The only thing is that when you are supposed to have the raw materials in two days, it takes about three days so movement is slow; they are afraid and this has made the prices to go up. What we were buying at N90,000 per ton is now N150,000 per ton. As a result, we no longer make profit but because we still want to be in business, we have continued.

“Last year, a female staff in a auditing department colluded with the salesgirl and they defrauded the company of about N11.5 million. For instance, when they collect N100, 000 from a customer, they enter N50,000 and enter the rest as pending so we did not notice on time until it was late. We invited the EFCC and in the end, they were asked to be paying N30,000 every month until they finish paying.”

Distribution:

“We have our products in almost every part of the country and recently, we started producing dog feed with the extruder. We have shops being managed by the Managing Director. She is in charge of marketing our products. We have trucks that do the supplies and some customers also bring their trucks to buy,” he stated.

Training:

“I went to Georgia University in the US to acquire more knowledge in the field. Last year, I went abroad to learn more about the extruder so that when problems arise, we will be able to solve them.

“We requested for experts from abroad and they came here to train our staff for a whole year. It is more expensive to send them abroad. So once in a year, I travel abroad to be trained in new technologies and then pass it on to the staff so if any of the machines breaks down now, our people will repair it.”

Division of labour:

On whether they plan to have their own farm, the chairman said: “When you go abroad, you see that those who are in charge of farming are different from those who are producing. If you want to farm as well as produce, you may not be able to cope. We are trying to educate our people to embrace the principle of division of labour. If I am a producer, you supply me the raw materials like soybeans, maize, palm kernel cake etc. They create employment also and that is why we will not go into farming. But we do small fish farming to test our feed before pushing it into the market.”

Culled from www.vanguardngr.com