Calabar General Electric facility to provide over 3,000 jobs

General Electric’s Calabar facility in Southern Nigeria is set to provide over 3,000 jobs upon completion, the firm said last week.

“We are investing over $1bn dollars in our Calabar facility over 5 years and we have already trained 15 Nigerian engineers who will be at the vanguard at the cost of about $3.6 mn. Our plans to localise operations and create long term job opportunities for Nigerians remain unwavering,” Uzo Nwagwu Chief Operating Officer Oil & Gas (West Africa) told a gathering of journalists during a facility tour of GE’s Onne facility.

Nwagwu was visibly excited at his company’s expanding footprint across Nigeria and the jobs they continue to create in alignment with the Federal government’s local content policy.

The Onne facility, which became fully operational in 2013, functions primarily as a repair and maintenance hub and is only one of three such GE facilities cross the world with the other two in Brazil and Scotland.

At Onne GE undertakes refurbishment of sub-sea equipment that return to the sea bed as good as new.

But they plan to up the ante and do a lot more in Calabar where GE intends to lay a solid foundation for knowledge and technology transfer to Nigerian sub-suppliers, academic institutions, and people.

GE will manufacture brand new equipment at its Calabar facility which is expected to come on stream in 2018 and the Calabar facility is expected to provide 250 direct jobs and another 2,500 indirect jobs.

In a presentation to showcase GE Nigeria’s local content achievements, Sunny Ojieh, head of Local Content at GE told the gathering at a short briefing before a facility tour of the Onne plant that “At GE, our clear intention is to localize operations via manufacturing and repairs, develop and leverage local supply chains, create long term job opportunities and support communities.”

The Calabar facility is a huge undertaking spanning over 3,500 square meters with all standard equipment installed and GE will undertake the fabrication of subsea wellheads as well as refurbishment of subsea production trees

GE expects that by 2018, this state-of-the-art facility will become a hub for GE’s industrial businesses including Turbo-machinery, Subsea, Power Generation, Aero, Distributed Power and Repair Service.

The Calabar facility will also include a training center for technical and leadership development.

To make its dreams real, GE in 2014 spent $3.6million training 15 graduates made up of three manufacturing engineers and 12 technicians. They will form the core of Nigerian engineers in Calabar just as the 14 at Onne.

GE whose history in Nigeria extends to 1930 continues to see itself as a committed partner with Nigeria and remains resolute in transferring technology and know-how to allow Nigeria reliably and safely bring energy resources to the world.

Nigerians make up 70 percent of top Executives and 80 percent of mid-Level Managers within GE Nigeria which rounds off at 502 Nigerian employees as against 79 expatriate staff.

Nigerians will also account for 90 percent of direct employment at the Calabar facility with expatriates providing on the job training and support.

This unique local content strategy at GE lays the foundation for knowledge & technology transfer to Nigerian sub-suppliers, academic institutions, and people while facilitating greater development of in-country capabilities as well as continuing opportunities for recruitment and local talent development.

GE has already committed to partnership and collaboration with Calabar Tech.

An MOU has been signed with a commitment to invest in capacity/capability build. GE is investing $2M to support building upgrade, curriculum development, teacher training, and equipment upgrade.

All these would position the Calabar facility not just as a technological hub, but a key employer of labour as well as robust example of what a strategic local content policy and vision can accomplish.

PATRICK ATUANYA