By Amin Kef Sesay-Ranger
During a conducted press tour of the Sierra Leone Brewery Limited (SLBL) on Wednesday 21st December, 2022, journalists were updated or briefed about the company’s 2022 activities and shown the company’s latest investment in its production chain.
Addressing the Press, the Corporate Affairs Manager of Sierra Leone Brewery Limited, Foday Daboh, commended and expressed gratitude to members of the Press for their support towards the company, which he described, as very outstanding saying such helped to put the company in a position where it is today.
He also spoke about what the company has done in its areas of operation and even beyond since its inception in Sierra Leone in 1960s, stating that recently the company celebrated its 60th anniversary of which he maintained that 60 years down the line the company has been living up to expectations.
Commenting on the activities of the company’s 60th anniversary celebration, Foday Daboh said that the celebration went well and that it started with an in-house celebration, a three days football gala organized for their immediate neighboring communities to participate in, tagged: “True Togetherness Inter-Community Football Gala”, holding an SLBL festival etc.
Foday Daboh said that for the past two years the company has been receiving complaints about their products, adding that as a company they deemed it fit to invite the media on a tour of its facilities especially their production chain in order for Pressmen to see how impossible it is for them to do certain things warranting complaints about their products.
He added that the company’s products do indeed meet international Standards and ISO specifications further dispelling rumors going around that the Brewery’s products are contaminated.
“All Brewery Products meet ISO Standards and Specifications,” he affirmed while taking the media on a tour to examine the company’s facilities and for them to get first-hand information of their products during the production chain. He disclosed that the company has invested on its facilities in order to ensure that it produces quality products for its consumers, furthering that with all the highly sophisticated equipment used for producing Brewery products, it is not easy for them to produce contaminated drinks.
The machines, the Corporate Affairs Manager said, can reject any drink or bottle or can that has problem during the production chain, of which demonstration of contaminated bottles or cans were made by the company in front of journalists and journalists saw when those contaminated bottles and cans were rejected by the machines in the production chain.
He used the opportunity to inform pressmen that the company has spent 500,000 Euros in building an equipped Supply Chain Academy were young Sierra Leoneans from Universities will be trained and certified with the necessary job market skills.
On his part, the Laboratory Manager at Sierra Leone Brewery, Donstance Thompson Freezer, toed the line of the Corporate Affairs Manager, and added that as a company they are producing drinks that meet international standards.
“Our Products are ISO certified which shows that we are producing quality products that meet international standards,” he disclosed adding that except out of human error, but it is not easy for the company to produce contaminated drinks.
In light of the complaints coming from members of the public about their products, he said, the company has developed a Complaints Management Unit to look at those complaints coming from consumers and if they discover that they are genuine after doing laboratory tests they would compensate any complainant.
Climaxing the tour was a question and answer session.
