Olam International Limited has begun production at its integrated fish feed and poultry mill at Ilorin in Kwara State, Nigeria.

Production began on the same day as an event to inaugurate Olam\'s new poultry feed mill and DOC facilities in Kaduna State, which was presided by His Excellency President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Together the two state-of-the-art animal feed mills, poultry breeding farms and hatchery represent an investment of around 150 million USD.

Olam’s advanced new fish feed manufacturing facility will boost feed supply to help meet rising demand in Nigeria for fish, which is currently two million metric tonnes per year.

Fish-farming is essential to meet the supply gap and reduce the need for imports – currently almost 700,000 to 800,000 metric tonnes of fish and marine products are imported annually, resulting in a foreign exchange outflow in excess of 1 billion USD.

One of the barriers to increasing production is readily available, affordable and good quality floating fish feed – it currently accounts for over 70% of the local farmers’ production costs.

The Kwara mill has an initial capacity of 75,000 metric tonnes of fish feed per annum that can be further scaled up.

Olam estimates that its local sourcing of raw materials such as soybeans, corn and cassava for its animal feed operations will positively impact more than 300,000 smallholder crop farmers.

\"We thank the Governors of Kaduna and Kwara States for supporting our projects,\" stated KC Suresh, Olam’s Managing Director and CEO for Grains. \"Our world-class facilities will provide high-quality, cost-effective products that will help farmers and rural Nigerians to prosper. In the same way that Olam Grains has built a highly successful wheat milling footprint across Africa, we will be looking to scale our animal feed operations, both in and beyond Nigeria.\"