FRIESLANDCAMPINA, a Dutch dairy company, has built a mobile yoghurt plant in Nigeria.

A statement signed by Corporate Affairs Executive Director Ore Famurewa said the mobile plant would enable the company to process milk from local dairy farmers into long-life yoghurt drinks.

The project is part of the Dairy Development Programme (DDP) that supports local farmers to increase their milk production, improve the quality of the milk and offer them access to the market, the statement said.

The company noted that it would contribute to stronger value chains, a stronger economy and good nutrition for the local population. 

“With this mobile dairy plant we help thousands of local Nigerian farmers by ensuring the sales of their milk and, consequently, their income. We are also creating jobs and provide the population with nutritious and affordable dairy products. In this way, we are cooperating with the Nigerian government in providing food for the rapidly growing population,” said Corporate Director Dairy Development and Milk Streams at FrieslandCampina WAMCO Jeroen Elfers said.

The plant consists of five interlinked containers and was built by Scherjon Dairy Equipment and Onesto Construction in Surhuisterveen and Drachten (Netherlands) respectively.

The five 40-foot containers are expected to be shipped to Nigeria soon, the company said, noting that the containers  would be interlinked as soon as they arrived at their destination.

With the mobile yoghurt plant, FrieslandCampina extends its processing capacity in Nigeria.  The manufacturer exports dairy products and semi-finished products from the Netherlands, but it also produces dairy products using milk coming from local dairy farmers in Nigeria.

The new yoghurt plant will start with processing 1.8 million kilograms of milk and can annually produce more than 18 million pouches of drinking yoghurt, the statemenr further said, noting that the processing capacity could rapidly be scaled up.

“We expect we will be able to put the plant into use in the first quarter of 2022 in Nigeria,” the statement noted.

FrieslandCampina has had its own dairy plant in Nigeria since 1974, FrieslandCampina WAMCO (West Africa Milk Company). Peak is the best-known brand of FrieslandCampina in Nigeria. In 2020, FrieslandCampina acquired the dairy company Nutricima and with this obtained a second processing location in the South-west of Nigeria and became the owner of, among others, the NuNu brand.