The Managing Director, Chief Executive Officer of Guinness Nigeria Plc, Mr. Peter Ndegwa, has disproved claims that the company was revalidating expired products without authorisation and supervision, as well as exposing its raw materials to rodents.
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Stating this during a media interaction in Lagos over the weekend, the MD said in line with best practices, Guinness Nigeria destroys expired raw materials in partnership with the government, adding that samples of the said revalidated raw materials were taken to the manufacturers who analysed them to know if their ‘best before date’ could be extended, and in cases where they were deemed okay for extension after analysis, they were extended.
He said the over-riding objective of the company was to avail customers of world-class products and value for money through continuous maintenance and improvement of quality it had established in over 60 years of operations in the country.
According to him, “we take our responsibility to deliver quality products seriously. The meticulous and painstaking work, including rigorous quality assurance that precedes the final production of all our products, has a singular objective: to ensure that our consumers drink products that are healthy and comparable with similar products made by a Diageo facility anywhere else in the world.”
Also speaking against the backdrop of reported sanction on the company by NAFDAC, the Corporate Relations Director, Sesan Sobowale, acknowledged the receipt of a letter from NAFDAC, and added that the alleged infractions relate to a rented off-site warehouse where raw materials were stored; explaining that the said storage facility was not a production facility and that the quality of its products was never an issue when the regulatory agency visited.
He said the issue NAFDAC had with the company when they visited was that the agency insisted that its authorisation was required before destruction of expired raw materials can be carried out, and that they were supposed to be involved in the process of approval of new ‘best before date’ by the manufacturers of these raw materials before they could be revalidated.
“We were in the process of engaging NAFDAC for clarifications and resolution of the issues before the private correspondence from NAFDAC to Guinness Nigeria was clandestinely passed to the media”, Sobowale stressed.
He also noted that the claim that rodents were in the warehouse only arose from the figment of the imagination of the media house that reported the story last Wednesday.
“NAFDAC did not state in their letter that there were rodents in the facility, rather the food and drug agency indicated that the condition around the warehouse could attract rodents.”
However, he added that the company late last month fumigated the warehouse and were given clean bill afterwards, noting that there was no way rodents could live there since it was fumigated a week before the agency visited.
On his part, the Supply Chain Director for the company, Cephas Afebuameh, said the high quality of products from Guinness Nigeria has been attested to repeatedly, not only by NAFDAC, but also by the Standards Organisation of Nigeria, as well as the internal quality controls of the Diageo Group.
“The company’s conformity to the highest standards of quality have enabled the repeated re-certification of its products and procedures by some of the world’s leading certification organisations as the International Standards Organisation (ISO) as well as NAFDAC and SON. “The company received the ISO 9002:1994 quality standard in 2001, becoming the first brewery in West Africa to be so honoured,” he noted.
He therefore reaffirmed that Guinness Nigeria was very positive that on account of its ongoing engagement with NAFDAC, the issues would be clarified and resolved in a short while.