By Ebele Orakpo

Mr. Ifeanyi Ukegbu is the Chairman/Chief Executive Officer of Colectic Resources Nigeria Limited, a company that is into agricultural material production, specializing in animal feeds raw materials. After obtaining a Higher National Diploma in Urban and Regional Planning from the Federal Polytechnic, Owerri, Ukegbu went on to read Project Management at the University of Calabar, Cross River State. He spoke to Financial Vanguard on why he went into his line of business and the challenges involved. Excerpts:

Mr. Ifeanyi Ukegbu

Why I started Colectic: In the last few years, I discovered that the economy was becoming agriculturally–driven. If you look at the focus of the last administration, you will see where the policy was going and when I saw the emphasis being placed on agriculture, I started researching into which area I could go into.

I have passion for vegetable oil; in fact, that was what gave me the push to go into this business. When I found out that you can produce oil from soybean, maize and sunflower and they are very healthy for human consumption, I settled for soybean.

Experimenting:

You know, education gives you a wide horizon to dive into anything you want so that was why when I found I had this passion, I started studying all I could about soybean, from the planting of the seeds, to harvesting, the drying and the usage. I started experimenting, first, with the soybean and I saw that the oil was very good.

We tried maize and the oil from maize is very good too but when we analysed the three and compared the soybean, maize and sunflower oils, we discovered that the maize oil has a better oil production but because of the interest we have in the soybean cake, we settled for the soybean seed because of the need of farmers.

What we do:

We use soybean seed to produce soybean cake and oil. The soybean cake is used purely by those involved in poultry and piggery and also those that are into feed production use it as a source of raw material for the production of feeds. They blend it with other ingredients to form what they want. For instance, the mixture for growers is different from the mixture for layers. So they use the cake in their production. They also use the oil as a mixture.

If the oil is refined, it is good for human consumption as vegetable oil but in the state it is here, we still call it raw material because it still needs to undergo refining process. What we only have here is the filtration process. We filter out the impurities from the oil but in the proper refining, they separate the odor and the moisture because in the state it is here, it still has moisture but one good thing is that the oil is cholesterol-free.

You can use it as it is now but the only thing is that it foams because of the moisture content. We imported the machine, finished installation in October and commenced production in December last year.

Challenges:

Our major challenge is the Boko Haram insurgency. As you know, we get our raw materials mainly from the northern part of the country so the Boko Haram issue has affected the rate of soybean seed production and consequently, the price at which we buy the seeds and the prices of our products. But all in all, by the grace of God, it is a good business and we are doing well.

Incubation Centre:

I want to appreciate the Federal Government for encouraging small businesses and for the opportunity given to us here to start. If they had not given us this place, definitely, the cost of production would have been higher because you have to look at the cost of renting a place.

But here at the Technology Incubation Centre, under the National Board for Technology Incubation in the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology, we are provided free accommodation otherwise, cost of production would have been higher.

They have provided us the opportunity to incubate our businesses and mature so that by the time we are leaving here, we would have already developed the tentacles to spread out; this place is like a formative stage for any serious-minded person that wants to go into industrial production or entrepreneurship so the government actually did a good thing by encouraging us. Apart from giving us this place, they also organise seminars for us to enhance our businesses free of charge, bringing in quality people to talk to us on how to grow our businesses.