THE Dow Chemical Company, the largest polyethylene, resin and adhesives producer in the world, says Citigroup’s snapshot of Nigeria’s 2030 economic outlook has spurred its investment in the country, especially in the plastics packaging sector of the economy.
Alessandro Corticelli, the company’s Sales Director, Adhesives Middle East Africa and Turkey, MEA&T, disclosed this in an interview with Vanguard during Dow’s West Africa Customers Day, held in Lagos.
He said: “We want to be the market leader. The Nigerian economy is going up and down like other economies but there is an estimate from Citigroup that between 2030-50, the Nigerian GDP will be the largest growing one in 40 years. “So, Nigeria is pointing to be what Germany and Japan had been after World War 2.
They started from middle-level and then a boom. That is what the bank said. So, in our perspective, we would like to be a leader of a much larger market in terms of packaging knowledge and infrastructure transfer.
“The company opened office in Nigeria two years ago, and it was a shared office; shortly after, we moved to a new office building; so, we are building our presence in the country.”
Fielding questions on rejection of Nigerian export products in Europe and America, due to poor packaging, he said: “I’m not surprised that Nigerian exports are rejected abroad.
Although the country is developing, yet the level of sophisticated packaging here is not the same as in Europe. But the packaging industry here is progressing and getting better.
“Since I started dealing with this region four years ago, I have seen packaging changing in the last four years because of Dow’s presence but we are not the only reason for things getting better in the packaging world.
There is process of sophistication in the industry-when you go around digital world, there are other players in the industry with more expensive and sophisticated production links. So, Nigeria market is improving on packaging.”
