A Nigerian exporter has shipped 7,000 Metric Tonnes of Cocoa beans from the ECM Terminal at the Calabar Seaport in Cross River State, south-south Nigeria to the United States of America.

The Managing Director of Starlink Global and Ideal Limited, the Nigerian export company, Adeyemi Adeniji, stated that the cocoa beans were sourced from Ikom local government area of Cross River State which constituted a factor in utilizing the Calabar Port.

Direct export
Adeniji who stated that history was being made with the direct shipment of non-oil product from the Calabar seaport to the United States of America said: “in our search for a solution to different dimensional problems facing export in Nigeria, we opened a direct export from Calabar to the United States of America using a chartered vessel.”

“As a proud Nigerian company, our reserve is to elevate Nigeria’s name internationally by doing all we can to prove that we are resilient, resourceful and innovative and forward looking”, he added.

Adeniji remarked that though the cost of shipping directly from the Calabar seaport to the U.S. was higher when compared to the Lagos port, “the company was spending as much as 200,000USD to guarantee the safe passage of the chartered vessel. We are exporting 7,000 Metric Tonnes of Cocoa.”

He explained that it would take five days to load nearly one million bags of Cocoa into the vessel which will spend 17 days to arrive the United States of America.