Lagos -Guinness Nigeria has said that Nigeria still remains an attractive business destination from international players in the drinks industry as they have made significant investments in some regional breweries in the course of the financial year, leading to massive re-launch of both old and new brands.
These are the views of the new chairman of Guinness Nigeria, Mr. Bernard Savage in his industry wide view of the industry.
He said total beer consumption in the country has continued to grow in spite of the global financial crisis.
Shareholders in Guinness Nigeria are the better for it as they would smile home as the company is proposing to pay N7.50kobo per unit of share to them.
The sum of N11.062 million has been set aside for that purpose.
On the company financials, he said turnover grew by 29 percent from N69.2 billion to N89.1 billion while trading profit increased from N15.8 billion to N19.8 billion, a 25 percent growth difference over the previous year performance.
According to him, “we sharpened our focus on the excellent execution of our strategic plans and drove employee engagement around winning in the market place”
On the future outlook, Mr. Savage expects the rest of 2009 and most 2010 to be less challenging for the economy and the brewing industry as the global financial and equity markets are showing signs of recovery, adding that Guinness Nigeria would not only maximize efficiencies in its core business processes and systems, but would equally maximize shareholder value.
In its corporate social responsibility activities, the Guinness chairman highlighted some of the projects it recently established in its host communities. He said new water projects were completed under the water for life programme in Oregbeni in Benin City, Egbeluowo in Aba, Iperu-Remo, Olowu in Iju, Lagos, Owode near Ibadan, Ikpayongo near Makurdi and Odeukwu in Aba serving an aggregate population of 450,000 nigerians.
Support to its host communities continued under the Guinness Nigeria Engineering Scholarship Programme and the Technical Education sponsorship of indigent students to the institute of industrial Technology, Lagos, the Guinness Eye Hospitals in Enugu, Lagos and Kaduna.
Besides, the company invested on improving infrastructural facilities, such as the commissioning of a modern tarred road in its host community in Benin City.
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