By Prince Okafor

Nigeria is set to adopt African standards on Sugar and sugar products as well as develop Nigeria Industrial Standards, NIS, for Glucose and Sucrose.

Towards this end, a technical committee meeting on sugar and sugar products has been held at the Standards Organisation of Nigeria , SON, operational headquarters, Lekki, Lagos, recently to consider the adoption of some African Standards under the auspices of African Organization for Standardization (ARSO) and the development of other Nigeria Industrial Standards.

At the meeting, Director General of SON, Mr.  Osita Aboloma, said the current trends in the processing of sugar has necessitated the elaboration of new standards because the quality of raw materials along the food value chain, the technological procedures and the handling determines to a large extent, as well as guarantees the quality of the finished products.

“It is therefore imperative for Nigeria to develop standards that take into cognizance these salient factors in a bid to forestall threat to life, waste of resources and to boost the quality of products both for local consumption and exports”, he said.

While alluding to Nigeria’s contribution to ARSO’s efforts towards harmonizing Standards within the African continent Aboloma said Nigeria stands to benefit from the adoption of these harmonized standards through increased trade opportunities and competitiveness of its goods and services at both the African, sub regional and global levels.

These, he said are in line with the policy thrust of the government to diversify the economy and improve non-oil exports to which SON is in a key position of adding value, through standardization and quality assurance.

Standards considered for adoption at the meeting were; ARS 875-2017 Raw Cane Sugar; ARS 876-2017 Brown Sugar; ARS 58-2017 White Sugar Specification and Determination of Lactose Content by High Performance Liquid Chromatography. The draft Nigeria Industrial Standards also considered during the meeting were for Glucose and Sucrose.

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