By Moses Nosike

ZITRONIX Engineering, an indigenous electronics manufacturing company established to provide effective power and electronic solutions is ready to partner with government, financial institutions to improve technology. The local but fast growing tech company which has asserted itself strongly and credibly in the minds of its customers and clients is set to bring cushioning technology to the door step of every Nigerian and African homes.

According to the Managing Director, Chidiebere Ojobor, “The idea of Zitronix was conceived during my universities days after my visit to a close friend whose family were not connected to NEPA because of the shady method of sharing electricity bill. The situation gave me a concern, so I was moved to find a solution to the situation. That was the genesis of a research and design exploit that gave birth to Zitronix DC- AC Inverter.

Chidiebere-Ojobor

With the huge support of my friend, the first working model though a naive design was successful. What I thought would have taken me a week of sleepless nights took years of research and design involving millions of Naira trying to create a professional model that could stand the test of time.

As pioneer members of Students in Free Enterprise back then in school, we imagined producing thousands of these inverters and having them at the door step of every Nigerian home, but some friends discouraged us saying in Nigeria government doesn’t pay much attention to research, invention and investing into local technological growth or local manufacturing”.

“It was actually a herculean mission but we were resolved to change the world around us in our own unique way. If the likes of Ford, Cyrus McCormick, Bill Gate,Steve Jobs etc. were not resilient their countries might not have come to limelight.  Today we  have created professional models that compete effectively and may possibly beat the foreign products, acquiring machines that can assist in the mass production processes and other manufacturing  basics  at start up”.

According to Ojobor, “we are ready to partner  with  government, financial institutions, NGOs to ensure that this tested and approved technology continues to serve Nigerians and as well compete favourably with foreign made ones.  With government  support and patronage of  Nigerians the sky will be our starting point.

Zitronix started after my youth service at my father’s garage. We started with design, construction and installation of car immobilisers because it was cheap to construct but were highly profitable. Again personal savings have helped us in purchasing the company’s basic working tools and equipment. Shortly after we started, we began to receive orders for Inverters. With the little profits we made and financial support from our family we expanded our business scope and location. We began standardization of our products with steady improvement on our products following our customers’ complaints. This has equally defined and improved the potency of our quality control processes and company policies.

At the moment we have been able to acquire some basic machineries for mass production and assembly of power electronics in Nigeria. Our products are designed for Nigerian use. They are rugged, durable, user-friendly, clean, safe and affordable. We started with production of analogue DC-AC inverters and today our inverters are digital, microprocessor based with PWM technology and inbuilt intelligent battery charging unit and automatic change over, and many other characteristics that make our inverters outstanding amongst other popular foreign brands, besides our customer and technical support advantage. It’s with utmost confidence that we warranty our products as much as up to 18 months and more depending on the features.

We are currently developing our quality control process for mass production of our voltage stabilizers, which includes industrial voltage stabilizers. Also in process is our AVS/VM (Automatic voltage switch/Voltage monitor), and other power electronics and SMT based smart products.

However, with government support, more job opportunities will be created with our manufacturing outfit, even as we call for importers, distributors of inverters to patronise our Nigerian made products. Zitronix inverters are durable and better than most foreign inverters”.