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| OG Plastics Managing Director: Abdul Wahab Jagot. |
Q. Can you give me a brief background of your company?
OG Plastic Industries was established in 2008 with a vision to be the market leader in manufacturing and exportation of polypropylene and polythene bags in Malawi. We want to achieve our vision through the combined use of highly skilled and committed workforce, advanced technology, and efficient customer service.
Q. How big is your workforce?
Currently, we’ve 260 people working in our factory. We envisage that this workforce will greatly increase as we expand production capacity.
Q. How can you describe the plastic industry?
The industry is viable especially when i have enough expirience of market and production also in the wake that we are able to export someof our products to other countries in the region and earn foreign exchange for the country. On our part, we've been in the industry for this short period of time, as compared to others who have been in the industry for over two decades. Our success and achievement has greatly encouraged us and it is our hope that we should attain our vision in the short term.
Q. How is the plastic industry contributing to the economy of this country?
As alluded to earlier, we regard the industry as contributing greatly on foreign exchange savings since agriculturalists don't need to import bags from abroad since they can buy them locally at a cheaper price. In the past when Malawi didn't have an industry such as this, country used to lose a lot of money (forex) when importing bags from the region. By the same token, our exports to Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Zambia help to generate foreign exchange for the country. We're also contributing to the economy of this country through Value Added Tax (VAT). In addition, we feel that we are making a great contribution towards poverty reduction through employment.
Q. What are the challenges?
Our major challenge in the short term is that we cannot expand machine capacity and increase productivity levels due to lack of adequate technical expertise. This will be addressed in the long term by our in-house human resource development initiatives coupled with training outside the country.
The other challenge is that transportation of our raw materials through Beira and Nacala encounters some delays and this poses disruptions to our production. This is why we applaud government for initiating the Nsanje Port.
Since we are relatively new, our third challenge is to create awareness of our existence and our quality products on the market. We are addressing this through aggressive market campaigns and advertising.
Q. Where do you get the raw materials?
Our raw materials come from South Africa, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, India and United States of America.
Q. What are you next plans?
From August 2010, we intend to diversify our range of products to include the production of many household products such as basins, buckets, plates, mugs and jugs. The idea is to provide durable and newly designed plasticware products for the comfort of our custmers in their homes.
Q. Can you sum up?
I would like to thank our customers for buying our products and also i am thankful to my prodction team. I would like to assure our valuable customers of our desire to give them the best plastic products possible. I think we’ve achieved a lot in product quality so that by November 2010, our company will have ISO 9001: 2008 certificate. This means that our products will be recognized at an international level.
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