Akwa Ibom State has gone beyond debates on the
functionality, or not, of the Poultry hatchery at Mbiaya Uruan. An assessment
tour with the Commissioner of Information and Strategy, earlier Friday,
confirmed that the State’s signature poultry project does a lot much more than
sell day-old chicks.
WHY THE HATCHERY
The Udom Emmanuel led administration inherited a project
site that was designated for a poultry hatchery facility. According to the
Senior Special Assistant to the Governor on Technical Matters and Due Process, Mr.
Ufot Ebong, who was also on the tour;
“On the swearing-in of His Excellency, May 2015, he had
promised industrialization. Afterwards, he actually informed his aides that you
cannot hang industrialization on nothing. You must provide the raw materials.
That’s where he came up with that statement “all you need is all you have”. By
March 2016, we were able to get an investor from Ethiopia, Prime Poultry. They came
in and we were given marching orders to get this thing up and running”.
“We found out that the entire Eastern part of Nigeria got
day old chicks from the Wes. Even farmers from the far North-Eastern corner of
this country received those products flown to them. We said, if we have this
big hatchery that can produce 230,000 day old chicks per week, that we can
supply the entire eastern Nigeria, north to south; and that’s the target.”
THE BREEDER FARM
At the start of the factory, according to the General
Manager of Akwa Prime, Mr. Yakubu Bala, the hatchery had to buy eggs from the
Western part of the country, which were brought down to Akwa Ibom, hatched and
sold as day-old chicks.
The Government resolved to construct a breeder farm complex,
for raising breeders, commonly called Parent Stock. The temporary breeder farm
structure has several 60 by 30 feet floor space structures being built. Already,
an entire block and several other sections are in use as pens housing over
20,000 layers, broilers and cocks, as at time of research.
THE OFF-TAKERS SCHEME
Excitingly, research revealed that the largest number of
off-takers in Eastern Nigeria came from Akwa Ibom State. This meant that we
also had the largest and nearest market; all we needed to do was to create
in-roads for sales. The Akwa Prime Off-takers Scheme took off, based on this.
In simple terms, Mr. Bala puts it as; “contract farming. I
tell you I want chicken, you grow them for me.” Poultry farmers in Akwa Ibom no
longer have birds waiting to be bought.
15 hectares of land has also been allocated to an investor
to build the permanent breeder farm complex.
This portends absolute independence of the State and regions nearby from
Western poultry farmers.
HOW THE GOVERNMENT IS INVOLVED
When asked what the agreement between the State Government
and the Ethiopian investor looks like, Mr. Ufot Ebong, who also revealed the
full involvement of the Ministry of Agriculture in the execution of this
project, had this to say;
“We have equity participation. And most importantly, our
agreement ensures that our people are employed here by up to 90%. There is no
interference from government, but we have auditors that will check the books at
the end of every financial year to ensure that the State’s part of the equity
has been remitted. We check that they have honoured the MOU they signed with
the Akwa Ibom Government to employ our people; good jobs, not slave labour.
So we’re not going to interfere with any investor coming to
do business, after all we have never hatched eggs; we don’t know how they do
it. It stops at our equity participation”.
Mr. Bala supports that assertion thus;
“I’ll confidently say that 93% of the staff here are Akwa
Ibomites. It’s even an employment rule
that; “look where are you from?” before you’re employed. The breeder farm
manager is from Akwa Ibom; in fact virtually all the managers are from this
state.”
HOW EFFICIENT IS THE ENTIRE SCHEME?
The General Manager emphasizes the techniques employed and
regulations observed in the entire hatchery project. Firstly, the enforcement
of Bio-secure zones, which prohibit visitors and especially unsterilized
personnel from physically accessing the breeder pens, to the absolute
prohibition of access to the incubating section – greatly reduces the risk of
the breeder getting infected with the risk of deadly disease passing on to the
day old chicks hatched from their eggs. It prevents fatalities too.
“We’ve not had even one mortality; I can say that with
authority because they’re under my watch. Our customers comment that the birds
are strong, so that even when they have not been sold for a day or two, they
still thrive. The product is our pride”.
The establishment of the breeder section has greatly saved
poultry farmers the cost, time and stress of travelling to Ibadan and other
western cities for day old chicks. In time past, it was revealed also, the
greatest problem faced by poultry farms in the State was the availability of
buyers, but the Akwa Prime out-grower scheme has gone to solve that problem,
thereby shooting up the number of poultry farms currently operating in Akwa
Ibom State.
At the moment, says the General Manager; “the establishment
even has a problem of shortage of products for the market. “We have a wider
market in Akwa Ibom here than outside. My sales manager has had to recently
delay treating an order from Owerri, asking the buyer to hold on for two
weeks.” He said.
At present, the hatchery produces 10k to 20k per week. The
volume of day old chicks lifted from the hatchery has gone up from 35,000
tonnes per week to an average of 60,000 tonnes leaving the hatchery per week.
BENEFITS TO ASSOCIATED INDUSTRIES
Mr. Bala showed the tour team to few bags of waste matter
remaining from sales. Vegetable farmers, including Benny farms - one of the
benefits of the State’s Tomato cultivation programme - have become off-takers
for the bags of animal waste.
The carpentry industry has also been impacted greatly. The
proliferation of poultry farms has increased demand for wood-shavings, a
product that carpentry workshops did not know, prior to the time, could fetch
them revenue.
THE FEED MILL
Research reveals that several agriculturalists had attempted
to set up feed mills in the state to produce to commercial quantity, but none
was sustainable. Mr. Bala lends a conclusion as to a major cause of such
failure:
“They did not have the depth of consumption to compete with
the bigger millers”, he says.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR MORE BUSINESS
In order to have raw materials for the feed mill, Akwa Prime
factory has extended the out-grower scheme to maize farmers in the state. In simpler
terms, if you can plant maize, the feed mill can buy it off you. Mr. Bala
revealed that the company has designed a contract for two maize farmers in the
state. They will be the pioneer maize out-growers.
The scheme is also in need of out-growers for soya, palm
kernel cake, bone meal and other raw materials needed at the feed mill.
AKWA-PRIMO MEAT
The hatchery Facility rears breeder chicken, manages the
process of laying hatch-able eggs, incubates and hatches; sells day-old chicks -
and even extends to the management of a feed mill and the out-grower scheme,
but there is still more. It also packages poultry meat products for sales to
end-users.
The tour went through the preparation, preservation and
packaging section for meat. There are refrigeration rooms that preserve prepared
and packaged meat at -170C. These packaged products are sold to
malls, supermarkets, dealers and end-users.
Stone-cold, the products can survive, sold for days without decaying and
without need for addition of preservatives.
MOVING FORWARD…
Mr Bala says that by middle of next month, the hatchery
section will double in production capacity. And, according to him, it will
continue like that till the last pen, still under construction, is ready for
sue.
“Between now and end of the year, we should be approaching
the threshold of our capacity, which is over 200,000 day-old chicks per week.
Noted Figures
230,000 – Targeted capacity for hatchery production
20,000 – Day-old birds sold weekly
60,000 – Weight in tonnes of products bought by off-takers
weekly
93 – Ratio, in percentage, of Akwa Ibomites in the staff
database of Akwa Prime
17 – Temperature, in Degree Centigrade, at which Akwa Primo
meat is preserved at the Akwa Prime complex
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Uduak Umo is a PR Strategist and Public Interest researcher.
He wrote this piece from Uyo, Akwa Ibom State. Find him on Twitter via @UdyUmo;
Facebook.com/Uduak.umo and linkedin.com/linkuduakumo
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