FARMKONNECT Agribusiness Nigeria Plc., has reiterated its commitment to better serve its partners irrespective of the challenges the comapany is facing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chief Executive Officer, FarmKonnect, Azeez Oluwole, made this known at the company’s head office in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, during a press briefing held recently to clear the air of some wrong perceptions of the company being circulated online, and also update its esteem partners on the present situation of things.
Oluwole who noted that though the online publication about delay in payment of ROI to partners who had invested in the company’s snails village located at Ekiti state was true, said it is imperative for him to clear the air on some wrong perceptions being circulated about FarmKonnect, the Executive Governor of Ekiti State, Dr Kayode Fayemi, who has no involvement whatsoever in the matter but being used for cheap attention.
He said: “The year 2021 had been a challenging year for us, though last year, the impact of the COVID-19 was minor but, this year the company had its shares of the impact hugely. The first thing I want to say is that FarmKonnect is not a company that is created just as a crowd-funding/Crowd-funded company, though we ran three crowd-funded projects, but we regretted going into it. We run what we called agricultural real estate, which is our brain child on the African Continent, with this, people buy properties which are control farming system or farming facilities (Not land) and are kept on our farm for us to manage, they can also have it on their farms.
“In this structure, the ownership of the facility as well as the associated horizon risks are with the investor even though we manage it for them, (we only own the operational risks when we manage the farms) but in order to protect the investors, we went extra mile by getting insurance protection for all our clients”.
He described as quite unfortunate that many people do not read their agreements, stating that: “Regardless of this indemnity, we still promised our esteemed partners that we would ameliorate/ eradicate the losses, if we had enough time to farm the assets we have acquired.
“This year started with a Force Majeure, after we launch the snail village in Ekiti State, and for the first time in four years, we had a wind disaster and lost over 300 Million Naira worth of equipment and over 70 Million Naira worth of snail were killed. After this had happened, we ran to our insurance provider, laid the complaint, they inspected the site and reported that we have a claim, how do you have a claim if there was no incidence and insurance to cover such? In July, the claim was paid, but over 80 Million Naira less than the amount filed for, (this is verifiable).”
Oluwole noted that: “We had meetings with our partners and investors to inform them on what we are going through and to assuage their fears. We also mentioned the actions taken, including the upgraded designs which were refabricated in China and on the way to Nigeria.
“We are optimistic that within the next six months, the snail farm would be fully back on but regardless, we will have sorted our partners and restabilise their revenue calendar, we know that we would lose one year on the 5,000 sqm that was damaged, so we built 10,000 sqm in replacement so that we can recover from the losses within a maximum of 24 months. so we envisage that if we lose a year on 5 thousand square meters, we have built 10 thousand square meters in replacement, we would be able to minimize the loss of the first year.
“While we are committed enough not to transfer this loss to the clients, we reached out to our partners to appeal for time. However, there are news on the internet saying this company has gone down and the likes, we understood the feelings, especially with recent happenings, this is to assuage fears, FarmKonnect is here to stay, and we mellowed because we cannot continue to attract partnership in uncertainty.”
He disclosed that the company is presently doing all in its ability to make sure that they clear up the all the backlog of payments due.
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