Cold room business in Nigeria is
one of the multi-billion naira, silent businesses. Right here from where I am
sitting, I can count up to five multi-millionaires that I know made their money
from cold room/ food preservation business. Starting a cold room business in
Nigeria is usually for two investment purposes; for ice-block production and
frozen food business. Ice-blocks are sold in solid bars to drink vendors as
well as to caterers and event organizers for the cooling of drinks at events.
Frozen food business is all about
the preservation of sea foods and poultry products, beef and fruits. A cold
room is designed in the form of a large container in the like of a freezer.
Cold rooms can be imported or locally manufactured here in Nigeria. Locally
made cold rooms are popular because they are cheap and you have the power to
dictate your specification in size and quality.
Starting a cold room business in Nigeria involves taking the following
steps
Location and space
You have to look for a very good
warehouse which you can use as your cold room. The place needs to be spacious
and well ventilated in order to guarantee adequate preservation of your
products.
Determine your scale of business
The type of brand and capacity
cold room to be installed depends solely on your intended capital. It is good
to get fabricated cold rooms if you are starting on a small scale, big
companies have the financial strength to import. For people who want to engage
in small-scale cold room business, all you need is a good shop, refrigerators
or a min-cold room, constant power supply and of course, access to cheap supply
of products.
Determine products to sell
You should look around you and do
a proper research on the most lucrative items to sell. I could tell you that
Frozen Fish and Chicken are some of the fastest selling products but what if it
doesn’t
sell in your location due to stiff competition? The onus therefore rests on you
to determine what products would sell faster and better in your location.
Construct a cold room
You need to hire someone to
construct a cold room for you if you cannot afford already-made ones. 12 hours
is the maximum time required for the first batch of ice-blocks to be produced.
For subsequent batches, the machine will only need 9 to 10 hours for ice-block
production. An imported ice-block from Germany with the capacity of producing
50 blocks at a time sells at 2.1 million naira. Cold room owners also make
money from rental.
Constant electricity supply
PHCN is not your friend in this
business; they would mess you up. So get yourself a good, strong stand-by
generator to provide constant access to electricity. This is extremely
important in order to avoid goods going bad due to absence of electricity. Where would you get your goods from?
This is a very important decision to make. If you are venturing into frozen
fish, meat or turkey business, it is possible for you to process and package
your products yourself.
You could have a farm where you
would raise live chickens or livestock and then have them slaughtered and
processed for sale upon maturity. You can also process and package other
products yourself. This would guarantee you more profit than when you import
products. Other things you would need for this business include packaging
supplies, measuring scales, tables, polythene bags or cartons, bowls, knives
and support staff.
Prices and capacities of cold rooms in Nigeria
3 tons cold room
Capacity – 200 bags of fish or
3000kg of poultry products and meat
Price – N900,000
Power – 35kva generator, 2.2
million naira
5 tons cold room
Capacity – 500 bags of fish or
5000kg of poultry products
Price – 1.6 million
Power – 50kva generator, 3.4
million naira
10 tons cold room
Capacity – half a container of
fish more than 10,000kg of poultry products
Price – 2.1 million naira
Power – 75kva generator, 4.1
million naira
No comments:
Post a Comment