Industrialist wants bakers to embrace domestic ingredients for bread

Worried by the current challenges facing the country’s baking industry, bakers have been urged to be more creative by embracing innovative ingredients for the production of bread.

The Managing Director, Spectra Industries Limited, Mr. Duro Kuteyi, who gave the advice during the opening of a model of Spectra factory shop, designed to bring his products nearer to residents of Suco community, Oko-Oba, Agege, Lagos, lamented that the bread crisis is making bread to gradually disappear from the breakfast table of Nigerians.

Recall that a few weeks ago, bakers embarked on a four-day warning strike to draw public attention to the escalating cost of producing bread and other pastries.

After the strike, the price of bread was reviewed upward making bread, which is supposed to be a necessity unaffordable to many Nigerians.

He noted that for bread to continue to remain on the breakfast table of average Nigerians in the face of the skyrocketing price of imported flour, bakers must begin to look inward by embracing domestic and made-in-Nigeria ingredients that will not only improve their profitability but also bring down the cost of production of bread significantly.

He said: “A lot of bakers are going out of business and the few resilient ones have increased the price of bread, which is making bread a luxury and unaffordable to a lot of Nigerians.

“This is mainly due to the scarce forex and the crisis in Ukraine, which is outside the control of bakers. But bakers can be creative about it by looking at local innovative ingredients such as Sobake – defatted soya flour produced indigenously by Spectra.”

Kuteyi said by embracing local ingredients, the cost of production will reduce significantly, as well as improve profitability, noting that 1kg of Sobake in 50kg of wheat flour with extra 1.5 litre of water in the recipe of bread will give bakers extra yield by 5x500g loaves. 

Aside the high amount of protein the product contains, Kuteyi said the lower fat content of the defatted soya helps to increase the shelf life of bread, adding that from the feedback of bakers using Sobake, the product has become a welcome relief for bakers.