₦airaland Forum

SOME GOLDEN TIPS ON COMMERCIAL GARRI BUSINESS OPERATIONS

If you have sited your garri factory in a developed area, where getting regular supply of cassava tubers at reasonable price becomes difficult, you have a lot to do to keep the business afloat. In this case, you can take advantage of availability of electricity in the city and deploy mechanical fryer for the frying operations. That will help you save some costs to partly cover the extra cost being expended on transporting the tubers to the city. In addition to this, you can engage in a staggered production approach, whereby the garri is processed in the rural aside up to the pressing stage, and then moved to the city for finishing. You can have arrangement with a trusted local processor to handle this for you.

There is no specific season of the year that a commercial garri processor is specially favoured. This is simply because, the price of tubers always flows in same direction with the price of garri. The only difference is that the degree of movement may not be the same at different locations. Also, there may be slight gap (sometimes wide) in when the changes in price of either the raw material or the garri is happening at different places. Being privy to such time-location-gap differences could be explored to determine where or when to deploy resources to produce massively. It could also be explored to decide the best-selling markets for your finished product at any given time.
You can deploy resources to produce in large quantity during the heavy harvest season in your area and target selling the chunk of it during low harvest season. As farmers prepare for new planting season in an area, there is always increase in harvesting which also causes the selling price to come down. You can target this period at different areas to produce in large quantity. There is always a third-party facility to engage for production in all areas.

Most time, it is cheaper to transport the finished product than the raw material. And as long as the production environment meet up with your standard, there is nothing wrong in producing in different places other than your factories. A lot of Processing facilities are opened for contract production. You only need to ask around. You can then move the produced garri directly to your target market or store until the price appreciate.

While growing your own Cassava tuber to at least about 35-40% of your annual factory demand is advised, it is important to keep the cost of cultivation down as much as possible. Intercropping the Cassava with other crops to support the cost of cultivation is not a bad idea. With the high cost of inputs and farm services, if you are able to limit your entire net cost on cultivation to N220,000 per acre, with a yield of 7-10 tons, you have really tried.

Cost of manual Operations is another high burden on the target revenue in commercial garri production business. Together, manual peeling and manual frying take up to 35% of your sales revenue. If one is not careful, it can reach up to 50%, which will automatically bring the production to a complete loss. If one can find a way around mechanizing these two operations effectively and efficiently, it will be a great plus.
As I always say, balancing the usage of mechanical frying machines on fuel usages is a very crucial step to be mastered in deploying mechanical fryer. It will not be economical to run a diesel generator only because of just one garri frying machine out putting 400-500kg per day. The output will not justify the cost. Rather, it will be more economical to have two or three of those machines on a single generator running at a time in order to spread the cost. The kind of generator that welders are using (with R 1115 engine + compatible alternator) will conveniently carry up to three frying machines at a go.

And if you cannot afford 2 or 3 mechanical fryers on your own, you can share the facility with someone else (who also has mechanical fryer). In the absence of this, you can request your fabricator to make use of petrol or diesel engine separately for your mechanical fryer instead of the worm gear. Only that this kind of machine requires more expertise is speed control and balancing to produce quality garri.
You can as well install a Bio-digester plant to convert your liquid waste to cooking gas as the heat source for your frying Operations. This will enable you cut down on cost of firewood consumption significantly. It is neater and gives room for heat regulations and control during the frying.

Those who cannot afford the machines should do their best to reduce wastages as much as possible. Don't throw your Cassava peels away. Don't just give them to those begging for it. Sell them fresh or dried to support your cost. The starch that you are allowing to flow away from the freshly grated/sacked pulp is part of your money. Create a mean of collecting it continuously. Clean it up by dissolve in water, allow to sediment and decant. You can repeat this 2-3 time and you will have a very neat starch. Sell fresh or dry. Dry cleaners and those women cooking fufu will keep coming for it once they know you have it.

Also, you can as well concentrate more on the product offerings that gives you more edge. Lot of people in the SW produces only white sour garri whereas there is a big market for Yellow garri within the South West. Same thing applies to production of white (Starchy) garri for the Eastern and SS markets. Producing and distributing such locally will give you a tremendous selling price advantage compare with those being shipped from distant places. If branding and packaging will give you a stronger edge, please explore it.

While I will not say much on this openly here, I implore each processor to explore and experiment with processes on their own to arrive at their specific winning production formula or steps that gives them more volume advantage during production. Yes, there are ways.....
You can also explore opportunity markets. Pursue direct supplies into hotels, big cafeterias and industrial canteens. Look at possibilities of selling into those part of the country where garri production is not common and consumption is high. Use the link you have with government to explore supplying for consumptions at NYSC Orientation camps, Government Correctional facilities etc. The demand is steady. Getting just one this may be what you need to keep running your facility at a profit.

So, if you are already in this business; struggling as I can imagine or you are just planning to come into it, I advise you to always look both far and within. Let us all be focused, creative and intentional in our approaches to the different areas of the business. The success we all desire shall find us.

Click https:///2348100975775 to connect with me on WhatsApp and access my ebooks on cassava processing business at a discount price.

You can access the ebooks on selar online sales platform by clicking https://selar.co/m/FarmHouse.

You can also click https://www.facebook.com/ponyfarmhousegarri?mibextid=ZbWKwL to read some of my previous posts on Cassava value chain.

God no go shame us!
Kazeem Lamidi
+2348100975775