Bitter drinks’ wave: Nigeria remains Alomo’s biggest market

Kwabena Adjei, the founder of Kasapreko, maker of Alomo Bitters, is a resilient entrepreneur. He believes that Africa with its potentials is sitting on a gold mine and regrets consumption of imported products that could be produced in the continent. Adjei, who has won many awards for his innovations, told Daniel Obi that Nigeria was his biggest market, but regreted the faking of Alomo in the country. Excerpt:

Herbal bitter drinks market

Herbal bitter drinks market is flourishing in Nigeria. The market was deepened with the entry of Alomo Bitters in 2011. Before then, Swedish and German bitters were skeletally marketed in the country and because of the limited distribution there was not much awareness, as the visibility of the products was limited. Some consumers who would have possibly tried the Swedish and the German products believed that the bitters were for ‘big men’ and perhaps were not affordable by the common man.

Noticing this gap, some people started smuggling Alomo Bitters produced by Kasapreko from Ghana before the product got NAFDAC registration in Nigeria. The product received immediate consumer acceptance as the consumers needed something different from lager beer. When the product officially entered Nigeria, distributors jumped at it and this created the visibility and the product boomed, again on the back of affordability.

Predictably, between 2011 and 2012, the product market share hovered around 80 percent of the bitters market. But this share was soon weakened as adulteration of the product and genuine competition entered to tap into what experts described as N32.2 billion annual bitters market.

Adulteration market

Both registered and unregistered bitter products, which faked Alomo, entered the market unfettered. Some of them are mixture of chemicals, which do not contain herbs.

Kasapreko’s response

Prior to the double ‘attack’ on Alomo, the product made of extracts from seven herbal plants, the company, Kasapreko founded by Kwabena Adjei, 25 years ago had planned a $50 million expansion plant in Nigeria. The company, he said started in his garage and he had the determination to succeed.

The idea of the product came from the observation that Africans were drinking herbs locally mixed with alcohol. But his vision was to use scientific method to produce the product with clinical authentication.

Adjei introduced Alomo 10 years after the company was established, as he was producing Kasapregin. But the breakthrough came when he introduced Alomo Bitters, which became a trail blazer in the bitters’ category. He was able to find a scientific way of proportioning the herbs that were introduced into the bitters.

So, he was able to partner Scientific Plant Medicine in Mapong, which is World Health Organisation affiliate that did the extraction of the herbs. That helped him to make sure that the herbs and the amount of herbs and the proportion of the herbs are according to what is good for human consumption.

The company had previously promised to start production of Alomo Bitters and other aligned brands in Nigeria because of the country’s huge market, which is its biggest export, but said it was being frustrated by the faking of the brand that had reduced the brand equity of Alomo Bitters.

“We wanted to make a strong footprint in Nigeria and we have not cancelled the ambition, but once we are able to get rid of those destroying the market and harming the lives of the people through faking of our product, then we can decide to put the factory in place,” Kwabena Adjei, the company’s founder/ CEO told BusinessDay in Accra, Ghana, last week.

Adjei regretted that the faking of the product because of its success and health benefits had brought the equity of the brand down. “If we don’t fight the fake, we are hurting the government because fakers don’t pay tax. We are harming the consumers because fakers don’t use good product. Some of these fake products have been tested in our laboratory and I tell you that the result is shocking and unhealthy to consumers,” he said.

Adjei, who recognised Nigeria as a big market in Africa, said the brand’s dominance of the market had been greatly diluted, not by genuine competition but by fake market. He however said that the company, which is now exporting to European and Western and other African countries, was presently collaborating with Nigeria’s regulatory agencies and distributors to tackle the fake market.

In order to still offer the quality product to Nigerians who have accepted the product and checkmate faking, Adjei and his team are introducing security seal on the Alomo brand.

“Two years ago, we embarked on a journey to protect our brand and consumers. That journey took us to Germany where we partnered with a hologram company.”

According to him, the security will involve four levels all in an attempt to ensure that the consumer gets the right quality product. “We know that fakers will try to confuse the consumers with fake holographic seal but ours is so sophisticated and consumers will be able to identify the original from the fake” he said.

Production lines

In order to reach the growing international market, Kasapreko has commissioned two production lines – the pet bottle production that rolls out 40,000 containers per hour and the glass bottle line that produces 30,000 bottles per hour.

Entry into global market

Today, Kasapreko continues to receive enquiries from various countries such as Australia, US, and the UK, for the supply of Alomo and other brands within its portfolio. In all, it has 15 variants in gin, whiskey, wine categories. Adjei who has won several awards since 1999, intends to continue his market research to satisfy the growing market.

Daniel Obi