Can we actually get to meet u one on one? If yes where is ur base I like to meet u...

Why not, send me a mail and let us set up a meet. I am based in Ibadan, we have an office in Lagos and our farm is located in Kwara state.

My email is personaldomestic@yahoo.com, please email me, and also let me know when you want to meet so we can fix a time.

Keep em coming y'all.

But keep it business.

Also when you say 'we' how do you mean? You personally or Nairaland (the country).

Just yanking your chain, i get ur meaning. Also when you say 'we' how do you mean? You personally or Nairaland (the country).

Just yanking your chain, i get ur meaning.

YAY!!!

600 views!!!

Cant touch this... Tananana nana nana!! Cant touch thIS!!!

Hi Poster,
I will just like to clarify the following:
1. Is your need for the current massive investment tied to the deadline by the Moringa Plantation investors? Or why do you need such a massive investment at once, i.e from about 10 people to about 250?
2. How would you manage the accommodation, security and the other logistics involved for the much larger population of workers? Even with the supervisors, do you think you would still be able to maintain control over the process and subsequently quality and profit?
3. You did not really discuss the sales end. Do you have a ready market for all the produced charcoal, or how are you sure you would be able to return the investor’s profit at the end of each cycle?
4. With reference to my question 1 above, can you still maintain the level of profitability after you are done with the proposed Moringa farm? i.e if you move to a new farm where you actually have to pay for the trees, and if tighter forestry regulations are enforced in the nearest future which requires you to plant at least five trees for every one cut. If you factor these into the cost, would the business still be profitable?

Regards.

Frm what i gather so far,it seems u only need 500k and u are gud to go,but my question is what if u getting offer as high as 2m generaly frm ppl,will u b able to contain them?

Thank you for your questions.

1. We need to expand because it is the logical next step for us given what we know. There is no deadline given me by the owners of the farm, however since they would need to plant their crop it would be better if we have a larger workforce ridding the farm of trees. It is a lot of land.

2. Accommodation: Unlike the rest of us living in the city, the labourers build their own houses. They use wood and certain kinds of leaves. The only thing we provide them is nylon and ropes. They put that in between the rafia they use in making the roof. And they often prefer to sleep under the moon, and if it is cold, they light a fire. We also provide them with mosquito nets, but they keep it to take it back with them (yeah, they do that) and they rarely use it.

Security: I am not too sure how to answer this question, I think it may be a bit vague so i am going to be specific in the areas this questions are applicable.

Security from outsiders, i.e. Robbers.
No sane robber would come near a workforce of strong Togolese workers numbering in the hundred and counting, it is a death wish.
But that said, the village still has vigilantes who are plenty trigger happy when it comes to thieves.

Security from the workers to supervisors.
The workers cannot be hostile, it is too much a risk to even try to talk back to the supervisor much less get aggressive. If however an uprising occurs, we can always employ the services of the vigilantes although i am sure the owners of the farm would rather we used the police as one of the owners is a former prison head guy in Nigeria or something, am sorry am not too good with titles.

Security against theft.
Let us just say the risk of actually stealing from us is not worth it for them, they stand to loose alot and the since they can be easily singled out thanks to their language (and i think their looks) it would not be hard to catch a thief and set an example.

Quality Control;
With a supervisor for every 15 people we have, quality control would not be a problem. Firstly the togolese charcoal worker is very hard-working and they require minimal supervision, but we still supervise them like they were markurdi's. The supervisors would dictate the quality and we would educate the supervisors on the quality we expect.
The responsible of quality however is not that of the supervisor, the supervisor is mainly just a figure head serving as our link to the investor, but they play a role that is monitored by us and mostly our manager to make sure they fully understand what we expect and can supervise accordingly. It is really easy, we expect the charcoal to be of a certain size, they are to make sure this is the case.

3. Sales.
Currently our market is local, this is for reason of control. We have a ready market in lagos, and as i speak we have a trailer of 300 bags of charcoal on the way to lagos from ilorin ( there is a bit of a hold up in Ojo, in Ibadan, they should be in lagos in the next few hours)

We are affiliated with several chairpersons of the local charcoal sellers association in Lagos also known as the Ajaguntas. They pay 100% most times, and if not they pay 70% and in 3 days at most we get our balance.

This is however not our aim. By the time we reach a workforce of 80 people and upwards we would start exporting. The profit is higher but it is more capital intensive comparatively. There has been a lot of uncertainties we need to make certain when exporting charcoal. We personally do not believe in agents, we believe in having a relationship with the buyer, one that is present and written, by this we mean we would want a presence in the country we would be exporting to. Until we put all this in place we would not export. We however have some major leads in the export area and we intend exploring this when the time is right.

4. Currently we have about 1,000 hectares of land which was recently made available to us, our initial site was one in which we had to pay per bag produced. The duration of investment for the persons investing is 6 months. We would not be done clearing the land by then, it is impossible. However if it does so happen we manage to clear the land before the duration of the investment is done and those regulations kick in, i am certain we would have the financial backbone to engage in a replanting process without it hurting our bottom line much. We would most definitely be able to pay the returns and still have more to take home.

However the possibilities of this regulations coming up anytime soon is improbable, and it would still cost us N20 a bag for all the trees we can get. Sad and true.

It is impossible to make such a law when more than 80% of the country lives under a dollar a day. Before charcoal production became something to notice they have been cutting trees for their survival, and they still continue to do so, they need a source of fuel.

However they could introduce a heavier taxation on large scale producers, although i still doubt the possibility of that happening anytime soon.

But for now we have more than enough trees on private property.

Thanks you for the questions, I hope my answers are to your satisfaction.

Please people bring in your questions, and keep the mails coming in.

Thank ya!!

e mandman: Frm what i gather so far,it seems u only need 500k and u are gud to go,but my question is what if u getting offer as high as 2m generaly frm ppl,will u b able to contain them?

No sir Oh!

We need to expand our workforce to as much as 200 persons, this means we need more than 2 million Naira and yes, we can manage it.

The process of managing the workforce has already been explained in my post above.

Thank you.

Good night people!!Good night people!!Good night people!!

See y'all tomorrow!!

personaldomest: Yes sir. That is what we are saying.
And it continues every 6 weeks that your N500,000 yields N250,000 on a 6 weekly basis for 4 consecutive cycles.

Thank you.

On Every 6weeks, is the N250,000 just the profit added to the initial N500,000 invested ? Thanks, followed it up, would call you very soon..

@Osas001.
Yes sir, you are correct.

Looking forward to your call.

Thank you very much sir.

[b]700 VIEWS!!!!!

*DANCING*

Happy sunday people!!

Talk some more later. Happy sunday people!!

Talk some more later.

Hello people, happy sunday.

One of our investors wants the services of a nairalander to serve as a supervisor on the site of production.

Please if you are interested, you can reply here.

Our criteria includes.

1. You must be a graduate of a higher institution.
2. Must be able to live under sub par. conditions.
3. Physically fit.
4. Must be able to speak yoruba very well.
5. Must be able to cook own food.

Salary.
N40,000 per month, first salary payable after 6 weeks.

OTHER CONDITIONS.
Persons applying should know that if they choose to work with us, they would be relocating to Ilorin in Kwara state, and would have to remain there for the next 3 months before they get a one week break, after which they are to resume their supervision duties.

Also, as stated earlier, the living conditions are below par, access to a decent water closet is non existent and persons would have to employ alternative methods.

We take care of the feeding, housing and health concerns of all persons employed especially the supervisor.


All persons dropping in their information should include their email address.

Thank you.

NOTE: No calls please from person applying.

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY!!!

Well done Mam... i Admire your drive and business sense. i Wish you all the best.

Hi Poster,

Thanks for your reply. I think it addresses most of my concerns.

I would send you a mail to discuss some suggestions.

Regards.

@kunlef,
Thank you for the questions, i am happy my reply made a difference.

@Dpros,
Thank you for making me blush, lol.

@all, Thanks for making this post get 800 views!!!

YAYYYY!!!

I have sent you the email.

Regards.

@personaldomest - your post piqued my interest. However, please can you please clarify your relationship with the OP in the link below. The information is very similar but it seems his thread was closed by the mods as they suspected it of being a scam.

https://www.nairaland.com/1198796/charcoal-production-sales-it-yourself

Also, can you confirm

1. The price of one bag of charcoal i.e. market price
2. There is a huge variation in the returns in previous thread and this one so it would be useful to know why the huge difference. Also, what is store for you? I think it is important to be transparent in the numbers to give comfort to potential investors.

Thanks @somebody

Yes, I know the person, in fact that is my fiance, and he was extremely hurt by the reaction he got. I think it had to do with the topic of another post he authored titled 'this is a scam' as he felt the title was provocative enough to garner views and he felt once people read his post they would see it was genuine and would walk from scepticism to assurance, instead his sense of irony got a backlash.
I was not too happy about the reaction he got and the fact that MOD's treated his thread the way he did. He has had a phobia of nairaland ever since.


As for the price of a bag of charcoal, It ranges from N900 - N1200 a bag in Lagos where we sell.

The huge variation in the numbers can be explained simply. The former thread which he created was a do it yourself thread, he aimed at persons wanting to go into charcoal production by themselves. This thread however is a thread for investment aimed at the expansion of the business and as expected the numbers we would be giving back to investors would be reduced as we need to make a profit from the process. There has been no dishonesty on our part about this, every one that sent us a mail got a response that clearly stated what would be produced and what returns they would be getting.

Like i had said earlier, this is an open business, and we have had potential investors reach out to us already, some having done charcoal on a trading level before and wanting to broaden there horizon and increase their bottom line by engaging in the production process. Also we welcome being supervised the entire way.

Thank you for the questions, i had figured someone would connect the dots sooner or later on the relationship between both threads.

Good morning people, looks like i would be getting 1000 views soon, and yes that is a BIG DEAL for moi!

Thank you for the questions, please keep them coming in.

I would be away for a bit today, some things came up. Please forgive me if it takes a while to reply your posts.

Much love.

Please I would like to confirm this from you; someone told me that chacoal business is normally done between the month of September to march and he said to me that any thing out side this is highly risky. So if this is the case don't you think after first round of 6 weeks you may likely find it possible to default in your agreement with the investors?

I don't how people came up with the idea. We produce charcoal all year round (raining season included). Even though some international buyers do not buy during the raining season due to high moisture content, buyers in countries like Belgium and Germany buyer all year round. And also the local buyers buy all year round. I hope have been able to answer your question clearly. And please do more research on that. Thank You.

stagger: OP, try and plant 5 trees for every 1 you cut. Otherwise you will not only have no trees to cut in 5 years, but you will have killed the environment, all the wildlife and everything that depends on those trees.

Not everything is about money.

go and sleep. Try taking a flight from lagos to abuja with a window seat and see things for yourself. Nigeria na big. Bush. China never exhaust trees na come Nigeria. When a commercial charCoal producer comes to town, you will know all of this is subsistent.

I sent u a mail,u'v nt reply me

hi,
keep up the good work,
i sent you a mail and you did not reply

I will reply your emails as soon as possible, may email is acting up. thank you

personaldomest: I will reply your emails as soon as possible, may email is acting up. thank you

please after making 1 million (250k in 4 tranches, will I get my initial 500k back or it becomes yours?)

blink182: please after making 1 million (250k in 4 tranches, will I get my initial 500k back or it becomes yours?)

Your initial investment is yours.

personaldomest:

Your initial investment is yours.

wow!

Your biz model is good and I am tempted to encourage you on this path.

However, I am a bit disappointed in your disposition to the issues of environments.

Being a lady, and a potential mother at that, you should hope to leave a better environment for the coming generation.

Your argument that you are helping some moringa investors to clear the land of trees is not water-tight. With ur expansion plan, the entire kwara state may not be enough for you to sustain the business.

While I agree that the major culprit here is the govt and it's poor regulation on environmental issues, we as people should always be conscious of our responsibility to fellow humans, to the environment and above all, to our God.

We need not be coerced or forced to do the right thing. Don't join the bandwagon typical of most if not all charcoal producers about making money without any interest in the environment.

Some countries buying our charcoal at next to nothing have more trees than we do but the law makes it practically impossible for their citizens to destroy their environment the way we do it here.

As they say, one person at a time, we all can join hands to make the world a better place.

In a practical sense, you can choose to cut your trees above the roots to allow for 'the survival of the tree. Secondly, you can buy certain number of tree seedling for a certain number of trees felled.

I know a great deal about the charcoal biz but I have never done it because of the way people in this part of the world go about it.

Even if there are loop holes in govt policies and laws that allows degradation , and every other person in the industry is not bothered about the environment, shouldn't you?

While your charcoal investors can go on making the money, I'd like to be your partner and a better investor with you concerning the environment.

I therefore urge you to be more conscious of the environment. Let there be an area specifically designated where woods can be burnt.

I wish you the best in ur efforts to "make money for yourself and your investors" but be a true friend of the environment, so we don't become another Chad in the nearest future.

Still wwaiting for your reply to my mail