Ezekiel Adamu is the managing director and chief executive officer of the Balmoral Group, a 360 events solution company, is planning the first International Drinks festival in Lagos Nigeria, for December 2017. In this interview with BusinessDay, he speaks about the objective of the festival, the expected outcomes, and other issues. Enjoy this excerpt of the interview.
Tell us about the drinks festival and why are you holding a drinks festival?
Well, this is something I think should have happened a long time ago because it happens around the world especially the big countries that have huge consumers of drinks. You ask yourself, for major countries like UK, France, Australia, and the U.S., what is it that they have in common and why is it that the drinks markets are so huge? Why is it that they have so much variety? So obviously, what is missing from our country is the platform. These other countries have the platform where they invite the best of the best to go in.
Even then you notice that there are so many drinks company that do not have huge marketing budget that want to come into the country, but do not have enough money. So how do you get people to hear about them? The way they get people to hear about them is by coming for events like this.
Basically, what we are trying to do is to put Nigeria on the drinks market. When you look at Africa as a whole, Nigeria is about 40 per cent of the whole African market in terms of drinks consumption, so it is about time we had an event that puts Nigeria on the drinks market, just like this one.
In which other place is this type of event held?
This kind of event is held in Germany. There is also several of this kind of event in other places – in London, in America, and in Australia. It is actually a tradition for them to have this kind of event.
Is this the first drinks festival in the country?
Absolutely, this is the first drinks festival in Nigeria.
How will this change the drinks market in Nigeria?
The measure of success for us with this event is first, the local drinks here. We import lots of drinks into the country. Close to 70 per cent of drinks we consume in this country are being imported. We have a lot of local drinks in terms of variety and even volume, but you find out that our own local drinks are not moving as fast as you want them to.
The zobo, the ‘kunu and the other ones – what is the difference between those drinks that we import and our own? It is packaging, and doing it properly and getting it ready for export are the things we are trying to look at to see how the big brands can take over these smaller local drinks, to repackage them and sell abroad.
Also we find that as huge a market as Nigeria is, we do not have that much variety in terms of drinks. If you go abroad for festivals like these, by the time you go around the whole festival you will discover that there maybe one or two popular drinks that you have in Nigeria that you will see over there and we do not have as much varieties.
We are also looking at synergies. When a lot of companies wanting to come into Nigeria hear about NAFDAC certification, it is a problem. When bringing your drinks into the country, the (Nigerian) Custom is an issue. So we are trying to bridge that gap by way of bringing a synergy into the industry where we can forge ahead in terms of the drinks market because it is actually a huge market.
You mentioned local drinks. Are we likely to see local drinks exhibited at the festival?
Absolutely! We will actually have a section there called ‘Drinks of Naija’, and we are coming up with a campaign from October 1st, where we will be going round most of the halls promoting the local drinks that we have here. Definitely, it is actually a major section of the International Drinks Festival.
What local drinks are we likely to see there?
Palm wine, zobo, kunu, fura, and a whole lot of them.
How many exhibitors are we expecting?
We are looking at over 200 exhibitors; we have lots of brands that have more than one brand. For example you have a Nigerian Breweries that has a portfolio of about 50 different brands under them, but all in all we are looking at a minimum of about 200 exhibitors.
Can you paint a picture of what the event will look like? One, how many days is it holding? Two, what will it look like?
We actually have an unveiling – just a little snippet of what the event will look like. So what is there is that it is a 3-day event and we will be showcasing not only alcoholic drinks, but non-alcoholic drinks as well. Your dairy products, coffee, and everything drink.
We will have about four different pavilions for exhibitors: the premium pavilion, the SME pavilion, and the other small business pavilion as well. We will have an outdoor; there will be a beer village that will be operational. So the exhibition itself runs as a business and it is going to run from 8 a.m. to 6 pm. Then the beer village now comes alive and the beer village will be on till fade.
We also have different activities and entertainment that we will run during the festival and it is also a good time for families because we have brands like Ribena, Capri Snone, and others that are kids-friendly that will reach out to the kids. So, it is also a good time for the kids and family as well.
So, is it an open event that everybody can just walk into?
It is a free event with no gate fee. But for you to be part of it you must register before you come in.
Is there an online platform for registration?
There is an online platform and also we will try to reduce the traffic on that day by encouraging people to register online. There will be onsite registration as well.
How is the awareness being created, and is there a cut-off point?
There will be a cut-off point for exhibitors to register. In terms of visitors as I said, you can come to the venue and register but that will now be a bit cumbersome for an event of such a large crowd of about 10,000 people. We would try as much as possible to have multiple points of registration there, but we will still encourage people to register online before coming down for the event, just to make sure they are coming there as seamless as possible.
Do you have an idea of the size of the local drinks industry?
The local drinks industry is what this event is about as well, to bring this local industry out to international presence. I believe talking to lots of people especially international press and international people that we are speaking to, most of them are interested in the local drinks. They are interested in how to maximise the potentials of the local drinks because that will push the nation forward. It is not the imported drinks that we are bringing in that will actually help our GDP or help us grow; it is the fact that we can actually grow our drinks and sufficiently take those drinks for export as well.
Is there going to be lecture? What are the side attractions?
Apart from exhibition and displaying of drinks, we have different master classes that will be going on for educating the professionals in the field. We are bringing professionals from around the world to talk about how they have been able to brand themselves. When you go to the developed countries you have celebrity bartenders and even bartenders that people call and pay a lot of money to come and attend to their bar or clubs.
So we are trying to rebrand drinks professionals as well too, get flair bartenders where you have different stunt behind the bar. We have the summit like I mentioned earlier on, the summit is basically to try and bridge some gap. We speak to a lot of professionals and most of them will say, “Sometimes we import drinks. Three or four months it’s at the custom, we have not cleared it yet.” Some come in and say getting NAFDAC certification is a huge problem, packaging local drinks, the road networks, etc.
My colleague was actually in an interview the other day and they were saying how do we package? Its mango season, so how do we preserve mango juice? Those are some of the things the summit will try to address and we have the media there to educate the general public, so that the major brands will let consumers know how to differentiate the fake drinks from the original drinks.
We will also have lots of free tasting that will be going on, different activities like wine tasting and all of that. It is a festive season. We were actually strategic picking the first week in December, because December is actually a celebration period. So we are encouraging most of the brands to drop their price and give the fans a huge discount on the festival so that a lot of people wanting to have celebration in December can come to the festival and place their orders for the drinks and then we take it from there.
There is also a lot that will be going on in terms of entertainment, and drinking competition, and we are also trying to encourage people not to drive on that day because we are partnering with lot of taxi companies as well so as not to encourage people to drink and drive.
The technology company you are bringing in what is your objective? Are you looking at getting them to invest in packaging in the country?
Absolutely, packaging is a huge challenge in the country. This is the first of its kind and we will not shut down after this first event and then open in another year again. We are going to have a series of events that will be lined up leading up to the main event in December.
For example, when we finish this event in December, we are going to have some soft event where we are bringing big technology companies into the country that will bring the facilities and the machinery for packaging, for preservation and all of that. Not just that. We are also going to look for solutions that will help in making sure these drinks are packaged and properly done to be used for export as well.
