Description

Cassava is the most important root crop in Nigeria. Apart from being a staple crop in both rural and urban household’s cassava is a major source of income to cassava farmers and processors in the rural areas.

Currently, the country produces about 40,000,000 tons of the cassava tubers annually and due to the desire of the federal government to reduce import dependency and conserve of scare foreign exchange, there is need to increase the production of cassava starch as an alternative to corn starch.

An estimated 60 million tons of starch are extracted from a wide range of cereal, root and tuber crops for use in a staggering variety of products such as stabilizers in soups and frozen food, as coating on pills and paper, as adhesives on stamps and plywood, as a stiffening agent in textiles, as raw material for making ethanol and even as binder in concrete.

About 10 percent of that starch comes from cassava roots, a crop better known as the staple food of millions of low-income rural people in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Nigeria is the leading producer of cassava tubers in the world with an annual production of about 40,000,000 tons and nation produces more cassava than any other country in the world. The crop is abundant in 24 of the 36 states, requires minimum labor and inputs, and remains the most important food security crop for millions of Nigerians. Yet every year at least USD 680 million of flour, starch, glucose, and animal feed are imported to Nigeria, most of which can be made from processed cassava.

The cassava starch industry in Nigeria is dominated by small scale with production capacity of less than 0.1 tons per day. The production plants are usually found all parts of Nigeria where the chief raw material, Cassava tubers, can be found.

The national demand for cassava starch is in excess of 350,000 tons/ annum while domestic supply is less than 20%.

Starch has thickening and binding qualities. It is used as binder and thickener in convenience foods including bouillon cubes and baby foods. In the textile industry starch is used as yarn sizer and as a finishing agent. It enhances the weaving efficiency as it permits the loading of the fabric in such a way that the sizer is neither visible nor perceptible. In the textile industry, cassava starch is considered preferable to corn starch as the latter gives a dull finish and may change the color. Starch makes good adhesives.

Cassava starch is a whitish, powdery material which is used in the food, pharmaceutical pulp and paper and textile industries.

In the past, cassava starch was mainly used as a staple food by some tribes in Nigeria and for domestic laundry purposes.  However, attention has been drawn to its industrial uses in recent years.  Among its industrial uses are:  as thickener or paste in the food industry; syrup in the pharmaceutical industry and for textile sizing in the textile industry.

This report seeks to examine the financial viability or otherwise of establishing a cassava farm and cassava starch production plant in Nigeria using cassava tubers as basic raw material.

The size and locations of the farms is 6,500 hectares and the production capacity of the proposed plant at 100% of the installed capacity is one thousand and two hundred {1,200} tons of cassava tuber or three hundred and twenty two {322} tons of cassava starch per day.

The plant would operate at 60% in the first year, 65%% in the second year, 70% in the third year, 75% in the fourth year and 80% in the fifth year of the installed capacity.