Centre to assist 10 SMEs boost market

By Felix Andrew

Ten Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Tanzania are set to receive support from the Agro Business Innovation Centre (AIC) which would help them increase market for their produce, thanks to initiatives taken by the Small Industries Development Organisation (SIDO) in collaboration with other partners.
Speaking to this paper in an interview soon after having conducted a workshop on Product Development Packaging to some SMEs in Dar es Salaam on Wednesday, Director of American based InfoDev company, Jim Thaller said they would identify 10 SMEs dealing with food processing in Dar es Salaam and Morogoro regions and support them on various issues for a specific period of time.

He explained that the support will be in technical, training, financing and branding of their agricultural produces so that they can compete at local and international markets.

According to him, a team of experts will arrive in the country at the end of next month to asses and train eligible SMEs.
Thalle said the programme will commence later this year or early next year in collaboration between SIDO and Private Agricultural Sector Support Limited (PASS) which is based in Morogoro region.

The experts will be in Tanzania for a number of days and will provide training on designing packaging materials, packaging and labeling, choice of packaging materials required in the market, colours, shapes and sizes of packaging materials preferred by customers and training delivery techniques.
Other skills to be imparted include assessing technique functions of packaging, principles of packaging, criteria that packaging need to satisfy, key areas of packaging innovations and packaging protection.

It is anticipated that the proposed Agribusiness Innovation Centre will provide a set of financial and non-financial services to high- growth potential entrepreneurs, aiming to accelerate the growth of their enterprises and demonstrating product, process, and business model innovation.
For his part, SIDO Marketing Manager, Henrick Mdede thanked the centre for the support, urging SMEs to improve their businesses in order to receive the support.

He said the government in collaboration with various partners is determined to help SMEs across the country to have knowledge on how to design and use packaging materials that can attract customers to buy their products and even compete with foreign products.

'As SIDO, we commend AIC for supporting SMEs in technical, financing and training aspects,' he said.

According to him, the centre has brought experts in Tanzania after identifying that SMEs have limited understanding on various ways to develop their produces.

Speaking earlier, some SMEs outlined some of the challenges facing local entrepreneurs in the country as lack of entrepreneurship education, meagre capital which limits them from improving their businesses and packaging materials.

Expounding, they said there is also limited availability of good packaging materials in the country, although they claim to have high quality products that can be promoted in Tanzania and overseas.

'We ask them to support this initiative because packaging is an important marketing strategy to access sustainable markets and on the other hand is very important to promote products,' they noted.

A research carried out in different countries indicates that the majority of SMEs are using packaging materials for their products, but over 50 percent of their packaging does not match packaging requirements.

There are many important items in the packaging strategy such as uniqueness, functionality, safety, easy to remove, promoting product’s benefits and reinforcing the brands that are missing to the extent that their products are easily accepted by the market.