RAKESH AGARWAL

• Company Overview: JV of Tolaram Group and Indofoods
• Overseeing factory production & operations as per plan, safety management, quality management, energy efficiency management, environment friendly waste management
• Formulating budget formulation, handling all accounting procedures, inventory control management, cost analysis and M.I.S
• Ensuring quality product delivery; managing overall operations involved in production planning including coordinating in marketing, manpower management, supplies and up-time of equipment
• Overseeing production of products and implementing plans with view to ensure timely accomplishment of production targets within the requisite standards, cost parameters & Annual Operating Plan
• Facilitating continuous improvement initiatives, applying tools like lean manufacturing to improve quality, cost, safety and cycle time
• Investigating the unusual / unacceptable results, process validation & cleaning validation samples, monitoring in process, blend analysis and reaction monitoring samples
• Leading, mentoring & monitoring the performance of team members to ensure efficiency in process operations and meeting of production targets
• Creating and sustaining a dynamic environment that fosters development opportunities and motivates high performance amongst team members
• JV of Tolaram Group and Indofoods
• Fuelled $50mn sales growth through active sales and penetration in the market, resulting in being the No.1 consumer oil brand in Nigeria.
• Fuelled $175mn sales of Bread flour through complete project idea with entering market , resulting in being No. 3 flour brand in Nigeria.
• Introduced multiple cost-saving measures across the group to reduce COGS:- 1. reduction in wrapper dimensions to save $5mn p.a. change in structure of pkg to enhance quality and same time reduce cost by $10mn p.a., using Six Sigma tool & PD team to reduce Fat uptake in Noodle resulting in bringing down oil consumption by 12,000MT annually. Other multiple projects which can be discussed.
• Overheads cost reduction - this is one of the major areas being worked upon. Firstly, Nigeria power cost is one of the highest, so lot of sustainable and cost saving measures installed over the year bringing reduction in carbon emission and savings of $6mn p.a. Secondly, Localising more manpower from expats (70 expats out of 180). Enhancing more capacity of existing which brought down the per ton overhead cost.
• Digitalisation - The company had a a lot of systems and was working fine but everything was on papers. A lot of digitalisation has been put under my leadership from Production, HR and other depts reporting to Machine learning (anomaly detection). PD team also was completely digitalised and coded.
• Led diverse teams, promoting a cooperative work environment. Indonesians, Nigerians, Zimbabweans, Indians, Phillipinos, Ethiopians, Ghanian, Egyptian, Swazis and South Africans.
• Established clear budgets and cost controls strategies to meet objectives.
• Six Sigma - It is a major function in our group and the whol team lead is lead by me. From recruitment to training and running the projects. Several successful projects have been completed like - reducing transportation cost, Fat reduction, packaging cost reduction, quality improvement, Overheads cost reduction and many others. This team is running now for over 13 years.

Projects done during the the period:-

• Kellogg Tolaram Noodle Plant Egypt 2019 - Brown Field project of $25mn in Cairo, Egypt of building a complete Noodle plant with Japanese Noodle Machines with 4 lines and Flavor packaging division. Capacity of 80,000MT
• Kellogg Tolaram Noodle Plant Eswatini 2021 - Green Field Project of $20mn in Eswatini of building Noodle plant with 2 Japanese Noodle line and Flavor packaging division. The project was done during a peak covid period from 2020-2021. Capacity of 40,000MT.
• Green Packaging Ltd, Nigeria 2023 - 70,000MT capacity carton plant with 4 pkg lines and 1 corrugating line. Total Project cost of $21mn.
• Other than above several expansion projects done during tenure of my 15 years workex.