How To Start Locally Made Fresh Chicken Business In Nigeria
Over the years, there has been rising complains about frozen chickens imported into Nigeria.
There are claims that processors of these chickens are using some chemicals considered harmful to human health to fatten and preserve their products.
According to a report by This Day Newspaper, imported products are poisonous because smugglers use formalin, to preserve and keep them fresh from neighbouring countries till it gets to Nigeria. Formalin is a chemical used to embalm corpse. Formalin is a cancer causing chemical capable of initiating liver and kidney diseases.
Also, there is little or no mechanism at Nigerian seaports to screen or detect the residues of chemicals used in frozen meat being imported to Nigeria, hence, there is an easy entry for such products into the country and finally to the kitchens of unsuspecting consumers.
With the rising awareness about healthy living, the consumption rate of chicken by Nigerians of all status and religious believes as well as the number of poultry farmers in the country, there is a big opportunity in the chicken business.
Nigeria alone imports about 1.2 million metric tonnes of chicken and has over 200 million demand for chickens by consumers. Yet, there is still a huge demand gap.
With these figures, it means you can never go wrong with the chicken business in Nigeria.
Now here is the business angle to this — open an outlet where you will sell only freshly prepared chicken.
You either kill and process them and put them in a freezer from which your customers will select and buy or you keep them alive but in a place where customers can see them, make their choices then you prepare the birds for them right in their presence.
This business is already practised in many local markets across the country but the methods of preparation are not hygienic enough. The environments are dirty and the water used to remove the feathers are hardly replaced.
What you will be offering your customers is not only freshly killed unprocessed chicken but also hygiene for health-conscious consumers. That is the value you are offering.
The business is simple. Sell full chicken in kilos or sell parts of the chicken. These are some parts of the chicken you can sell: thigh, breast, gizzard, heads and legs.
You don’t need to have a poultry farm to start this business, you can buy directly from farmers. Many poultry farmers are looking for buyers.
Even if you don’t have money to buy chicken, you can reach an agreement with them to pay them after you have sold your life chickens.
You can run a vertically integrated business as well, where you own a poultry farm that will supply your chicken outlet with live chickens.
To run this business successfully, you might need to employ someone who will be butchering and preparing the life chicken for your customers. The number of butchers will depend on the number of your customers and how your business is growing.
As your business grows, you can now go ahead to acquire processing machines to make your services faster and easier.
Here are are some types of equipment you will need :
i. The Killing Cone: for slaughtering birds.
ii. The Feather Plucker: for removing the feathers of birds.
iii. The Scalding Machine: for heating water and immersing birds in it to loosen the feathers and make defeathering easy.
iv. Washing Bowl: for rinsing and washing meat.
v. The Hanger: used to shackle and suspend life or slaughtered poultry from a conveyor for killing, scalding, removal of feathers or cleaning
vi. Scale: for weighing birds.
vii. Refrigerator: You will also need a cold room or a big refrigerator with a constant power supply.
These equipment can be locally sourced and fabricated.
Part of the solution you are offering is that you are saving your customers the time and stress of killing and preparing chickens by themselves.
These are some of the fees you will incorporate into your pricing.
So let’s say a life chicken goes for a ₦ 2000. You can add ₦ 500 or ₦ 1000 to it for the extra service of butchering and cleaning. Multiply ₦ 1000 by 10 chicken per day that is ₦ 10,000. Multiply it by 7 days, that is 70k per week.
With the rate of chicken consumption in every single state in Nigeria, you will surely sell more than that.
There you have it, a value chain in agriculture you can play in.
