Nigerian Breweries Plc has restated its commitment to making an impact in education, agriculture, health and the environment in the communities in which it operates as well as across the country.

This was made known by the company’s Corporate Affairs Director, Sade Morgan, during a media briefing at the weekend. She added that Nigerian Breweries is a socially responsible corporate organisation with a good track record of corporate social initiatives.

Morgan said that the company’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) since its founding in 1946 is driven by a vision to always “Winning with Nigeria” and that over the years, NB Plc has been very active in supporting national development aspirations in line with that vision.

According to the Corporate Affairs Director, Nigerian Breweries has seen improved growth over the years and now has nine breweries spread across the country with 19 brands.

Morgan revealed that the company will be holding its pre Annual General Meeting (AGM) on the 7th of May, 2019 at the Civic Centre, Lagos.

She revealed that Heineken now holds 55.95% stake in Nigerian Breweries Plc with Nigerian shareholders holding the remaining 44.05%.

Noting that Heineken N.V has made tremendous success in the areas of enhancing the Sorghum Value Chain in some parts of East Africa, Morgan revealed that the company is weighing supporting commercial production of sorghum, one of Nigeria’s major staple foods and a commercially viable grain grown in Nigeria.

Highlighting areas where the company has left an enuring mark, Morgan said that Nigerian Breweries established an educational Trust Fund in 1994 with an initial grant of N100 million. The aim was to take a more active role in the funding of educational and research activities in institutions of higher learning in an effort to encourage academic excellence in Nigeria. This is in addition to its secondary and university scholarship programmes for children of employees.

Additionally, she said Nigeria Breweries also initiated Maltina Teacher of the Year on the platform of Felix Ohiwerei Educational Trust Fund which is a social arm of the company, designed to identify, showcase and reward teachers who are outstanding among their peers nationwide.

The Corporate Affairs Director hinted that Maltina Teacher of the Year will further be opening up the contest to retired teachers who may have done well when they were in active teaching profession. These crop of teachers, she said are to be nominated by their ex-students.

“We don’t want only serving teachers to benefit from the” Maltina Teacher of the Year”. We also want those teachers who are no longer in service but must have made their marks when they were in service, to benefit. They will be nominated by their ex-students “, Morgan said.

Speaking on the health sector, Morgan said that NB Plc has equally made donations of equipment to some teaching hospitals across the country and other medical equipment.

However, she decried the poor maintenance culture by some of the recipients of the medical equipment.

She therefore said that the brewing company was looking at making additional investments alongside the donations to ensure that recipients of the equipment are able to generate additional funds to support the maintenance of the equipment.

Lending weight to Morgan’s statements, Corporate Communications and Brand Public Relations Manager, Mr Patrick Olowokere, said that through the Nigerian Breweries-Felix Ohiwerei Educational Trust Fund, the brewing company has made significant impact on the Nigerian.

He said that besides the Maltina Teacher of the Year Awards which is open to all secondary school teachers in the country, both public and private, the Trust Fund recently made a $1 million donation to the Pan African University; donated a science laboratory to the University of Nigeria Nsukka; N10 Million worth of microscopes to the Department of Crop Production and Protection, Faculty of Agriculture, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife, as well as Computers and UPS’ to the University of Ibadan.

The purpose of the fund, he added is to help as many students as possible can to gain qualitative education that enables them to compete favourably with other students all over the world and ultimately live productive and fulfilled lives.