Kwara Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq on Monday said his administration would continue formulate policies that would make industries in the state thrive.
The governor gave the assurance in Ilorin, the state capital during a working visit to the Annie Glidden Commodities (AG) Nig. Ltd at Eiyenkorin, a newly established cashew processing plant in the state.
“My coming here is to encourage local investment. As you know, Kwara is a major producer of cashew nuts, and Nigeria is putting more interest in cashew processing. So it is a good thing to have a local production and make sure we export processed cashew nuts, rather than raw cashew nuts. So this investment is a major one. I think this is about the third major cashew company in the state,” he told reporters shortly after touring the facility.
He advanced that it would lead more economic gains to have local cashew nuts processing that would be exported abroad for foreign exchange.
AbdulRahman said the government would contribute its quota to ensure all cashew processing companies in the state to thrive.
AbdulRahman appreciated the company’s resolve to promote local economy through their investment.
“Our vision is to have Kwara as the leading processor of cashew in Nigeria. So this is another step to come here and look at their investment and encourage the company, and to also see how the state can partner with the company to scale up the processes,” he added.
While reacting, the company’s Managing Director, Ademola Adesokan, attributed the siting of the company at Kwara to the state’s strategic location in the cashew belt and good road network.
He furthered that about 120 Kwarans have been recruited by the company for manual handling of the cashew nuts daily.
“With the road network, we feel like Kwara state is a very strategic position to site our company. It is in the middle of Kogi, Ogbomosho, and Kwara region. You can see we are on Ogbomoso road, which is a very strategic place and good for our business. So we are happy to be here and we thank the Governor for this visit,” he said.
“It is very manual intensive. Even after we must have processed with our automated processing machines, we still have to deal with about 25 percent of the cashew nuts manually. Every single cashew nut has to be held by hand. A lot of the time we have 120 to 130 working here everyday.
“We have ready-made markets in the US and UK. We also have a local line that will be in stock very shortly.”