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Sunday, 14 February 2016

Vitafoam to diversify into auto parts manufacturing

By Omodele Adigun

BARRING any unforeseen circumstances, a new subsid­iary of Vitafoam Nigeria Plc will spring up later in the year to produce spare parts for use in vehicles, its Group Manag­ing Director, Taiwo Adeniyi, has said.

Adeniyi, who disclosed this recently at a media parley in Lagos, also lamented the com­pany’s inability to access for­eign exchange (forex) to buy necessary raw materials for production.

According to him, with the plan of the Federal Govern­ment to invest in automotive industry, there are some motor spare parts that should no lon­ger be imported into the coun­try.These include rubber tubes and oil filter.

“In fact, the company is currently considering produc­ing some of these spare parts for use in vehicles. If you have seen the shaft of a car before, you know that there is this rub­ber tube that covers the end of the shaft. That can be produced from polyurethane materi­als. Currently, the company is looking into producing those materials. And as part of our expansion drive, before the year ends, a new subsidiary of Vitafoam will be coming on board that will be producing oil filter. And it will go beyond cars, to the utility vehicles, gen­erators as well as water filters, he said.

On the shortage of forex, the Vitafoam boss lamented that the economy has not been particularly friendly to the manufacturers. “If you talk to any manufacturing companies around us , they will tell you that it has been tough. It is as if the policies of the new govern­ment are targeted at frustrating the manufacturing sector. It could be viewed that way,” he stated.

He, however, gave kudos to the Federal Government for its anti-corruption war, but regret­ted that the effects has not been helping the real sector so far.

His words: “We appreciate the fact that the government is trying to do a lot of cleans­ing activities. But at the same time, those cleansing activities, those recovery activities, those efforts at putting the economy back on a track have not done too well for the real sector. Eighty per cent of the materi­als we use for production is sourced outside the country. What that means is that, con­stantly, I need to have access to foreign exchange (forex). Even though, for us in the foam sector, we have not been taken out of the list of those that can access forex from the CBN, the question is, where is the forex? It is not available.

In the past, it was easy to do an LC (Letter of Credit), and within two weeks, you get your LC. But these days, it can be on for months. The LC re­quest to banks, some of them have been there for the past three to four months.



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