Obinna Iyiegbu, commonly known as Obi Cubana, the Chairman of Cubana Group, has declared his commitment to creating over 5000 new jobs for Nigerians with the launch of his bitters brand of alcoholic beverage, Odogwu Bitters.
During a meeting with journalists in Lagos this week, the businessman stated that the new investment would range between N2 billion and N20 billion over the next 24 months.
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Cubana described Odogwu Bitters as a drink for people of different socioeconomic backgrounds, adding that one of the decisions made on product distribution was based on trust, since the firm is willing to empower those without a startup fund if they are trusted to refund the money.
He said:
“What we want to achieve with Odogwu Bitters is to luxuriate bitters. Bitters is usually consumed by those in the lower stratum of the societal ladder. But we want to change that, we want to improve the quality of bitters so much that those in the upper echelon of the society will desire it.
We deploy high-quality technology to blend it and we have even added some other ingredients such as honey and ginger to improve its quality, yet the price is at par with others in the market.
Our marketing strategy is such that Odogwu Bitters will be sold in major countries of the world. Already, we are making plans to sell it in the USA, United Kingdom, South Africa, and other countries. I assure you, white people will take Odogwu. And that means foreign exchange earnings for the country. So, apart from creating employment opportunities locally and empowering critical sectors of the economy, we will also generate forex for the country.
The current capacity of our factory is 200,000 cartons a month. Our first production was 100,000 cartons. But to my amazement, these were exhausted in less than 48 hours. So, we have already started making plans to increase our production capacity. We are looking at doing 1million cartons in a month. That means increasing our current capacity five times. Now, we have about 300 employees. By the time our new factory comes on stream, we will have no fewer than 5,000 employees.”
