Yemisi Izuora
Red Star Logistics Company a subsidiary of Red Star Express Plc, in partnership with Fedex Express International has announced its plan to introduce less than truckload for agriculture produces.
Speaking at an Nigerian Association of Agriculture Journalist’s forum in Lagos, the company’s Divisional Managing Director, Mr. Ocholi Etu, revealed the less than truckload for agriculture produce is to support the young entrepreneurs in the country who would transport their goods from one state to another through the organisation.
According to him, We want to take our effective and efficiency service to the sector meaning that we would have consolidated centres in the major agriculture producing states, so that young agriculture entrepreneurs can have their produces brought to RedStar Logistics agro centers.
“You don’t need to have a full load of truck of agriculture produces to move your goods to your customers in any part of the country.
If it is weighed you pay whatever that was ascribed as fees to you and the goods will be brought to their targeted market like Mile 12 in Lagos and other agro cities market.
The ones we can deliver to specific customers would be delivered in good condition and safe.
“We are starting in Kano State because is a major hub of agriculture produces for now , you don’t need to have a truck load of produce before transporting your goods to anywhere in the country . With Red Star Logistics, even as little as one bag you can approach the company and we consolidate together with others as we are partnering with agriculture sector stakeholders, “he explained.
He noted that agriculture is one of the resilience sectors of the economy in this recession and the sector is still leading to boost the economy.
“Agriculture is the largest employee of labour and up to today the sector still holds that position, in fact recent survey by World Bank emphasized that agriculture is still the largest income generated activities in Nigeria.
According to Red Star Logistics boss, Sales of agric produce is not complete until consumption takes place meaning that if you are producing the right produce, right quality and you fail to get your logistics right, what is going to happen is that you will have wastage.
Logistic is much challenging in the chain because the infrastructure that we use to deliver goods to consumers are quite inadequate.
By infrastructure I mean the roads because the palm produces we need to move from the point of production to consumption station and along the way we need to have warehouse that has temperature control, vehicle that are temperature controlled to get the produces as fresh as it is supposed to be.
Now we lack all these things and majority of what is produced don’t get to the consumers. We are looking at what we call self-effort, as we don’t have infrastructure, we don’t have the rail system.
“In logistics what we do is how to cover the agriculture sector, introduce efficiency to get out of the situation we are now, and that means that we can actually get maximum of supposed agriculture produces from the producers to the target consumers.