Why Boulus promotes local content – Hardy

General Manager of Boulus Nigerian Enterprises, Julian Hardy, speaks on the company’s plan to actualise the local production of its automobiles. DGossip247 was there

What do you intend to achieve by producing automobiles in Nigeria?

Actually, it is very important. Boulus has been here for about 80 years. It is a Nigerian company, and we want to provide jobs and training for Nigerians, especially young Nigerians. If you come to the company, you will see many trainees. We have training going on the line and we are giving the trainees skills. We take a lot of trainees from ITF, we bring them into our factory and train them. By bringing young people into the environment, we are helping Nigeria to reduce the economic pressures. That’s why we decided to produce locally. We have different types of local vehicle parts like Peugeot, Mercedes and trucks.

Which brand do you intend to produce here?

We are still assembling. We brought motorcycles and we also bring tricycles. We represent Peugeot with the tricycles. About the training, what segment of Nigerian youths do you like to train – undergraduates or those already out of school? It’s both.

We have a graduate programme, but also the young students who have actually graduated are being encouraged to come back and get apprenticeship training. How many have you trained so far? We have trained about 20 so far and we have an ongoing programme with the ITF.

So, we are looking at 10 to 15 who will be coming to us in the next three months. We also have a graduate programme for social media marketing and we will be sponsoring those on internship through the university but specifically on social media marketing. The way ahead is social media in conjunction with newspapers and it’s these young people we are trying just for that.

After training them, do you intend to absorb them?

Yeah sure, into the Boulus crew. We will connect to other divisions and another thing is training Nigerian youths for the future. I

want to believe there is no local content in what you are doing now. When do you intend to open it?

All we have now is the body. This company has a relationship with Suzuki. Do you have any intention to work with Suzuki in automobile production? Something we have to do is something that progresses. So doing a thing with Suzuki is something we have to discuss again, because at the moment we have an agreement with Peugeot.

Would you like to reveal to us some of the companies that supply you with these local contents?

At the moment we have the Tecno glass. We are looking to manufacture the windscreen; we have the aluminum supplied by First Aluminum and the steel from the steel mills. The body is what the company is manufacturing. But what we have also done, because there are two types of Peugeot, there is an Indian model of Piggatos which is called the portals and the Italian version. With the Italian seat of right hand drive to left hand drive, we have created a mould for the dashboard which will be produced locally. We have already done that. We can produce the dashboard locally as well. We have a mould that is created locally; we are ready to roll with that.

What you said about the mould for the dashboard is very interesting. Nigeria’s automobile industry, especially the assemblers, need local content especially the ones made from Nigeria. What plan do you have for that?

When I first came to the company we had injection in mould equipment, which we still have in multiples. We have the original mould. We sold some of the equipment because they were off the date and we replaced them with new ones. What is your production capacity? We can produce up to 100 motorcycles per day on our production line as well as 80 tricycles and 10 four wheelers of Peugeot per day. That is 200 per month from the four wheelers.

What is the maintenance aspect like?

We have a very strong maintenance scheme. We carry a huge amount of stock. We have $3 million worth of spare parts stored in our spare parts warehouse. We conduct mechanic training throughout the whole of Nigeria. We have hundred parts of tricycles on the road and we have mechanics we have trained.

Is the maintenance affordable?

It is very affordable. We make it affordable to be easy for our dealers to sell it out, to enable them to achieve their profit as well. The main thing is to keep the production flowing because it’s our responsibility to support our dealers and their families to produce products they can be able to sell.

Do you intend to expand your brand range? To expand our brand range, it’s a been a journey since two years ago. We have expanded in volume; we have motorcycles with high volume and others with lower volume. From tricycles, we have expanded to four wheelers.

We are told that it is safer to travel on bike than in a car. Is it true?

It is really safer because you can avoid the hold ups. With someone that is trained in handling a motorcycle, you can reduce the time you spend on the road and get to any place you want on time.