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By Vivian Onyebukwa
Adeola Balogun is the Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Limlim Foods Production Company Ltd.
In this interview, she explained why she has remained committed to driving innovation and transformative change in the industry to enhance food security. She stated that she is dedicated to reducing post-harvest losses in Nigeria by working closely with key stakeholders including smallholder farmers and promoting sustainable agricultural food processing businesses, as well as offering valuable guidance to prospective players in the sector.
Why did you go into food production?
I didn’t start food processing because it sounded glamorous. I started because someone challenged me with a simple truth, people would always eat. At the time, it felt like one of the few businesses you could bet on with confidence. But once I got closer to the value chain, I saw the real story. Food is not just what ends up on a plate, it is health, jobs, income for farmers, and stability for families. In Nigeria, you can watch months of farming effort disappear in a few hours because of poor storage, bad roads, or a broken supply chain. When you see that up close, food stops looking like a “business idea” and starts looking like responsibility. That is what kept me. I realised you can build a profitable company and still solve a real problem by helping local produce last longer, travel better, and reach people safely.
How long have you been in food production?
We started in 2017 with something small, almost like a trial run to prove to ourselves that it could work. But it didn’t take long to face the realities of food processing in Nigeria.
What were the major early challenges, and how did you overcome them?
The first one was funding. Before you even talk about profit, you have to pay for equipment, packaging, compliance, and power, and all of that requires cash upfront. So we funded the early stages the way many Nigerian businesses do- personal savings, support from family and friends. Then grants and bank facilities as we became more structured. Over time, we learned an important lesson; you can’t use short-term money to build long-term systems. If you want consistency, you need patient capital, and we became more deliberate about that. Then came the issue of staffing. People often assume food production is just labour, but it’s not. It’s discipline, competence, and repeating the same standard every single day. We had to recruit carefully, train hard, and build a culture where people understand why the standard matters, not only what the standard is.
Seasonality was the other big teacher. In agriculture, supply doesn’t behave because you want it to. So we stopped hoping and started planning. We built relationships with smallholder farmers and their leaders, supported aggregation, and learned to work around harvest calendars. With agriculture, you respect the cycle, or the cycle will humble you.
How do you ensure quality control and food safety in your production process?
Quality and food safety are not slogans in our business. They’re non-negotiable. If you want repeat orders and long-term partners, you can’t treat safety as an afterthought. My background in multinational food companies taught me that trust is fragile; one bad batch can destroy it. That’s why we run on systems, documented processes, traceability, hygiene, and GMP discipline, and routine checks that happen consistently. We’re Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) certified, our products are National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) approved, and we keep the standards expected in regulated markets. Certifications are not decoration, they force structure and accountability. Most importantly, quality is everyone’s job. QA cannot “inspect quality into food.” The line operators, warehouse team, and procurement, all influence safety, so we build that responsibility into the culture.
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How do you stay ahead of trends and competition in the food industry?
I don’t chase trends. I watch underlying changes in the market, and then I move deliberately. Nigeria’s food industry moves fast because inflation changes what people can afford. Foreign exchange affects input costs overnight, and consumers keep demanding healthier, more convenient options. If you keep producing the same way you did two years ago, the market would quietly move on without you. So my lens is simple. I stay curious, I study global innovation, and I keep asking, what will actually work here with Nigerian-grown produce, logistics, power realities, and consumers, without dropping our quality standards? That question forces discipline, because not every “global best practice” survives local conditions on the ground. This shows up in the work people don’t always see. We test and refine products constantly. We improve packaging, because shelf life is not luck, it is science and control. We tighten sourcing because raw material quality starts at the farm gate. We upgrade processes to cut waste because waste is cost, and in this economy, cost will break you. I also listen closely to the market. Retailers, consumers, and B2B buyers are not shy, they tell you what they like, what they hate, and what they will pay for, if you pay attention. And I don’t define competition narrowly. It’s other brands, yes, but it’s also imports, substitutes, and the fact that consumer habits change faster than most factories can adapt. My strategy is to keep improving value, quality, and reliability, because in food, consistency it is what builds trust, and trust is what keeps you in business.
Food insecurity has been a major challenge. What’s responsible?
Food insecurity in Nigeria is not a single issue; it’s a chain reaction. If farmers lack quality inputs, extension support, mechanisation, irrigation, and basic good agricultural practices, yields drop, and contamination risks rise. Then insecurity enters the picture. You cannot build food security when farmers go to bed unsure that they can return to their farms safely. Add farmer-herder tensions and grazing pressures, and production shrinks, or farms get abandoned entirely. Even when food is produced, our logistics often destroy value. Bad roads and unsafe routes turn short journeys into long, risky trips. Perishables don’t have patience. The longer produce stays in transit without proper handling and temperature control, the more quality drops, losses rise, and prices climb for consumers. The fix is coordination, and not about news headlines. Strengthen productivity at the farm level, secure farming communities, invest in rural roads and reliable transport corridors, and scale storage and processing to reduce post-harvest losses. Most importantly, Nigeria must treat food processing as strategic infrastructure. When we process locally, we preserve value, stabilise supply, create jobs, and reduce the pressure on foreign exchange.
What measures can Nigeria implement to tackle inadequate food storage facilities?
Nigeria needs a real storage plan, not scattered projects that look good on paper and disappear in practice. The priority is to build pack houses and aggregation centres close to farming clusters, where produce can be sorted, graded, and cooled when necessary. For grains and staples, we need more functional dry storage, hermetic solutions, and warehouses with proper ventilation, moisture control, and pest management. Storage is not space; it’s preservation of value. Government can’t do this alone, and the private sector won’t move at scale without the right conditions. The smartest approach is practical PPPs, private operators build and run storage hubs, while government provides land, speeds up approvals, and offer targeted incentives. Financing must also match the reality of infrastructure; long-tenure loans and risk sharing that make storage investable, not a charity project. And power has to be addressed upfront. Cold chain dies without reliable energy, so we should scale solar and hybrid cold rooms and cluster industrial power solutions around food hubs. Most importantly, storage is not only buildings, its standard and skills. Nigeria must train operators, enforce storage protocols, and expand warehouse receipt systems so farmers and aggregators can store safely, access credit, and sell at better prices instead of being forced into distress sales
How can Nigeria tackle the sale of expired food products in supermarkets?
Expired food doesn’t suddenly appear on supermarket shelves. It usually travels through open markets and informal supply chains where accountability is weak and enforcement is inconsistent. Awareness campaigns help, but they won’t solve it on their own. People change behaviour when the rules are clear, inspections are routine, and penalties are certain. Nigeria needs tighter accountability from distributor to retailer. Regulators should increase spot checks, publish consequences for repeat offenders, and apply penalties that actually hurt, not penalties people budget for. Retailers also need to professionalise stock management, use first-expired-first-out (FEFO) and run expiry checks as a daily discipline, not an occasional cleanup. Technology can close a lot of gaps quickly. Barcode-based expiry scanning, simple digital stock systems, and basic traceability requirements for distributors would make it harder for compromised products to move quietly. Regulators should also create safe, anonymous reporting channels for staff and consumers and act fast on verified reports. This is not a small issue. Expired food increases illness, pushes up hospital bills, reduces productivity, and damages trust in the entire food system. The short-term profit is never worth the long-term cost, because in a marketplace like ours, the harm can reach anyone.
What major problems do entrepreneurs face in food production, and what is the way forward?
Food entrepreneurs in Nigeria don’t struggle because they lack ideas. They struggle because the system makes execution expensive. Regulatory processes can take too long, requirements can change depending on whom you meet, and compliance can feel like a moving target. Then infrastructure adds another tax. Most processors provide their own power, water, and sometimes even basic access. That pushes up unit cost and makes local products fight an unfair battle against imports and countries that subsidise industry properly.
Funding is another pressure point. Food processing needs patient capital because equipment, quality systems, and distribution take time to settle. High interest, short-term loans don’t build factories, they build stress
Talent also matters. A food factory runs on skilled technicians, quality professionals, and maintenance competence. Without that, downtime and inconsistency become normal. The fix is practical. Nigeria should digitise and standardise approvals to cut discretion and delays. We should build industrial food parks with shared power, water, labs, and waste management so processors can focus on production, not survival. We also need longer-tenure financing at realistic rates, plus serious support for export readiness so processors can earn stable foreign exchange. If Nigeria wants food security and jobs, it must treat food manufacturing like infrastructure, not a side project.
What’s your advice to anyone entering food production?
Don’t start with excitement, start with homework. Understand your raw materials, seasonality, shelf life risks, and who would buy from you at scale. Know your numbers early, pricing, yield, wastage, and cost per unit. If you don’t control those, you’ll work hard and still lose money. Take food safety seriously from day one. Document your processes, respect compliance, and build credibility the right way. Choose mentors and peers who will challenge your thinking, hire carefully, train your people, and build systems that can grow with you. Food rewards consistency. If you treat it casually, the market will punish you fast. If you treat it professionally, you can build a business that lasts and actually improves lives.
