Date: 2010-06-20

Poultry and animal protein processing have emerged in Kwara as the next phase of the commercial agriculture initiative of the state. Investigations by the Sunday Champion at the Shongai farm site revealed that New Nigerian Farmers Limited has four farms that are capable of breeding day-old chicks maturity for processing within six weeks. There is also a feedmill where feeds are formulated for the use of the farms.

This is the first step in integrating the maize and soya beans harvested from the farm into the agro-allied conglomerate. General Manager in charge of processing, Mr. Morne Van Dec Merwe, 44, a German-Dutch who have had over 25 years experience in chicken processing and management noted that "the factory is set to produce, a minimum of 7,500 processed chickens meant for the consumption of Ilorin residents and Kwara state at large.

Already, the poultry plant slaughtered about 2500 birds recently. Mr. Merwe also disclosed that "for the time being we have got four partners in the project. Each also has one fully operational chicken house; each house also has the capacity to house 25,000 chickens. Three chicken houses per farm is our target. The equipment for those houses have been shipped into the country. Ultimately, we hope to have 400,000 birds in the four farms."

He added further that, "first phase is the production of 2500 chickens per day, afterwards I want to increase the capacity to 5000 then to 7,500 the capacity that the current plant has got. After which we will increase the cooling of the plant and then increase production to 10,000 daily."

He explained that the chicken are slaughtered manually by a muslim after which its "gizzards, legs, and the intestine are separated for watering and dressing into the cooling system. It is after this that the fresh processed chicken are packaged in kilogrammes and sent into the blast freezers. There are five of these blast freezers. Some of them are operating at below 28oc and others at below 34oc.

He said, "We have signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with some promo food in northern, south-south and south-west regions of Nigeria. Obviously, this is a new enterprise but a lot of people still want to come to the table. We will be having a self-distribution of the products.

"Unfortunately, our buyers are predominantly people demanding to buy either one or two kilos, but we are out to sell at whole rate. Incidentally, the various states chambers of industry, mines and agriculture in the country have shown massive interest in our products. They want to sign MoU for distribution with us. Soprite and KFC foods want to do business with us. For us that is good news because that is a big money.

On the target consumers of the processed chickens, he emphasized that "the products of the plant are not meant for export. A lot of legislation is attached to exportation. The internal demand in the country has been very phenomenal. Therefore, the local market is our target audience. We will focus on Ilorin and the whole of Kwara state before we think about other states. Though, we cannot totally ignore exportation but that will be in some years to come."

He added that, "Unfortunately, money is my major challenge. We need operating capital that includes couple of millions of naira. I need packaging materials. They are not available locally. The first batch of 20,000 birds is in the region of N2.2million. Everything here costs money.

By MICHAEL OLANREWAJU
20 June, 2010
Culled from the Compass Newspaper