Description

Fruit generally has been defined as the ripened ovary of the flower, with or without other associated parts. It can be classified broadly into two, namely, juicy and pulpy fruits. Juicy fruits include: orange, lemon, lime, tangerine, tangelo, pumelo, and so on while pulpy fruits include pineapple, tomato, mango, pawpaw, banana, cashew, guava, breadfruits, avocado pear and so on.

Standard Organization of Nigeria (SON) defines fruit juice as the unfermented but fermentable natural juice intended for direct consumption obtained by a mechanical process from sound, matured fruits preserved by physical or chemical means. The juice may be turbid or clear (as in the case of clarified juice).

Tomato juice is a juice made from tomatoes, usually used as a beverage, either plain or in cocktails such as a Bloody Mary or Michelada.

Tomatoes are grown abundantly in many parts of Nigeria but most of these fruits are lost after harvesting. To reduce post-harvest losses of tomatoes, the products has to processed into tomato juice with the overall objective of conserving foreign exchange, stimulating industrial development, creating employment and reducing poverty.

Fruit juices are served at occasions such as, wedding, burial, house warming, seminars, workshops, and so on. The national demand for fruit juices is estimated atfive hundred and fifty million (550,000,000) litres, while current supply is less than twenty-five percent (25%) of the demand.

Popular brands of fruit juices in Nigerian markets are: Frutta, Edge, 5 Alive, Chivita, Fumman, Dansa, Fan juice, Chi Exotic, Lloyd’s fruit squeeze, Dudu, Cyway natural drink, etc. Common packaging is tetra pak, can, bottle (plastic and glass) and pouches.

The recommended minimum daily requirement of fruit juice has been estimated at seventy-five (75 mg) miligram. Our present intake in Nigeria is still below this daily requirement.

Fresh fruit juice is one of the chief sources of vitamin C (Ascorbic acid), required for the proper functioning of body’s inter cellular materials. It prevents some diseases from occurring. Deficiency of vitamin C leads to scurvy (bleeding of teeth gums) and failure of the body to form corrective tissue fibres.

In this regard, establishment of fruit juice processing factory will contribute immensely towards the improvement of our health care delivery.

Establishment of fruit juice processing factory will greatly solve the problems of food preservation in Nigeria.This feasibility report is to examine the financial viability or otherwise of establishing a tomato juice production plant in Nigeria.

The proposed production volume is four thousand five hundred (4,500) Litres per day with input – output ratio assumed at 1:0.65 (or 65% yield), 65% juice content. The plant would operate at eighty percent (80%) of the installed capacity for a single shift of eight (8) hours per day for three hundred (300) working days per annum and producing two million, one hundred and sixty thousand (2,160,000) bottles of fifty (50) cl.