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Unifoam as a company was established in Ilorin, Kwara State capital in 1982 to produce Polyo foam and mattresses. Within that period, it gain acceptance. Infact, it’s a house hold name for the people in Ilorin and outside the state because of the quality products produced by the company.

The Ilorin factory was covering Lagos, Ibadan, Akure, Onitsha made up of south west zone and parts of eastern Nigeria. People from these zones come on a daily basis to ask for our products because of the pleasure they drive from using them. As a result of the demand for our products, we now extended our coverage to the northern part of the country five years after we started business. We decided to extend our services to the northern part by establishing a factory in Kaduna in 1987. This was also extended to Kano the same year (1987) to reach – due to the demand for our products by consumers. With the establishment of these factory in Kaduna and Kano, our customers do not have to travel down to Ilorin to buy our products again. They have to order for it either from Kano or Kaduna there by saving them from the risk of transportation. This has given a tremendous boost for our products both within and outside the north.

What are the main idea behind establishing Jafco industries?

The brain behind the establishment is to provide affordable mattresses for the needs of the people and to create employment for the unemployed youths in the country. The company realised that Government alone cannot create employment for the teaming masses, “we have to support the government in our own little way by reducing unemployed youths in the society”, the MD said. Above all, we want to improve the economy of the nation since we are part and parcel of Nigerians. However, our main concern is to produce affordable mattress, pillows, sheeting for the people of the country at a very affordable price. We produce at a low and affordable price when compare to importing this products from outside the country or go down to the west or south to buy at very exorbitant price, but we believe that having the same thing in Kaduna here, it will serve the people around us and provide good and quality mattresses at affordable price for the need of the people.

What make your products different from others

Whatever you are producing, you must have the people that are buying it in mind. You should be able to know their needs, if you are able to meet their needs, their desire, it’s very easy to convince them to buy. We also produce good quality foam. We try to make our products qualitative and durable for our customers. These are the ingredients that customers are looking for, and we have them abundantly in our products. Besides, our price is affordable. You can’t say you produce quality foam, and fix high price for the foam. People cannot ordinary afford to buy. If the price is within the reach of the poor people, you see them rushing to buy the products. We have good quality, good price, good customer relationship, promotion and advertisement. All these make our products different from others.

Your staff strengtht

We have almost 89 workers in all

How do you survive among your competitors

To survive among the competitors is a big challenge. And anybody that wants to run a factory must not run away from a challenge. We have to do a lot of advert, people must be really convinced to know the different between local foam and original foam. You have to make a lot of promotions, give the customers, an added value. We make a lot of communications that is why, most of my sales staff, are always out to educate the people, on the importance of buying our products. These include; the durability and the affordable prices. Our customers are always told to buy the original foam that will last them instead of buying foam that will not take them for months.

How do you source for raw material?

Our raw materials are chemicals and they are not in Nigeria. We have agents that we buy from. The price is high, but since we have no alternative, we have to buy these chemicals. These chemicals include; polyol, TDI-Toluene di-isocyanate etc.

What are your Business challenges?

We have the problem of power failure, water etc. in our production, we don’t depend on the electricity always we have a stand by generator but the cost of buying diesel for this generator is extremely high. If we are to run production for 2 or 4 hours and there is a break-up in power, without a stand by generator, we have lost millions of Naira. Looking at the type of production machinery on ground, the generator that will carry this machine will consume lots of money for diesel.

Source of fund

Whatever profit we realized, we re-invest into the business. But in a tight situation, we ask for loan from the bank, we ask for overdraft.

Which way do you want government to assist?

We want government to assist us in providing chemical that we can use at affordable prices, import duties, taxes and levy should be reduce to enable us run the factory effectively. Above all, textile materials like clothes of different colour should be provided for us since we can not do without those materials.

We also appeal to the government to open textile factories that have closed down so that we can assess more of these materials.

MR. MAHMOOD ZIA is the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Jafco Industries Limited, a company that has been in operation since 1982. He spoke on the problems faced by the company, and what government can do to help keep the over 95 staff of the company on the pay roll and why people should buy their products.