Description

Nigerian agriculture is characterized by considerable regional and crop diversity. Analysis of this sector, particularly the food sub-sector, is fraught with serious data problems. However, the available statistics provide a broad overview of development in agriculture upon which we can make some broad generalizations about its role in economic development and structural change in Nigeria.

In the 1960s, the agricultural sector was the most important in terms of contributions to domestic production, employment and foreign exchange earnings.  The situation remained almost the same three decades later with the exception that it is no longer the principal foreign exchange earner, a role now being played by oil.

The sector remained stagnant during the oil boom decade of the 1970s, and this accounted largely for the declining share of its contributions.  The trend in the share of agriculture in the GDP shows a substantial variation and long-term decline from 60% in the early 1960s through 48.8% in the 1970s and 22.2% in the 1980s. Unstable and often inappropriate economic policies (of pricing, trade and exchange rate), the relative neglect of the sector and the negative impact of oil boom were also important factors responsible for the decline in its contributions.

On its diversity, Nigerian agriculture features tree and food crops, forestry, livestock and fisheries.  In 1993 at 1984 constant factor cost, crops (the major source of food) accounted for about 30% of the Gross Domestic Products (GDP), livestock about 5%, forestry and wildlife about 1.3% and fisheries accounted 1.2%.

One of the food crops grown in Nigeria is Maize. Maize (Zea mays L.), or corn as it is called in USA, has a multitude of uses and ranks second to wheat among the world’s cereal crops in terms of total production. Also, because of its worldwide distribution and lower prices relative to other cereals, maize has a wider range of uses than any other cereal.

Maize can be processed into different products for various end uses at the traditional level and on an industrial scale. While a large proportion of products utilized in developing countries are obtained via traditional processing, industrial processing meets the bulk of the demand in developed countries.

Nigeria has an annual maize production in excess of 10.3 million metric tons and is ranked as one of the top twenty largest producers in the world.

This report examines the financial viability of establishing a corn flakes processing plant in Nigeria using raw corn as the raw material with maize bran flour produced as a bye-product.

Corn flakes are food made by combining corn with sugar, vitamins and minerals to make them as nutritious as possible. For producing the fancy flakes specially designed flaker will be used. At present, corn flakes are popularly known as breakfast food in the world at large and generally taken with milk.Corn flakes use corn flour as the main raw material, it can also use oats, buckwheat, raw corn etc as raw materials.

When corn flour is used, after extrusion and flaking, the corn flakes produced would be very thin flakes, after high temperature puffing again, it become crispy taste food.

Corn flakes has a unique taste of corn and dietary fiber, suitable for breakfast, brewed with milk for human consumption. It can also as a snack food for direct consumption.

Corn flakes has two types: with sugar on surface and without according to taste and health preference. For sugar spraying corn flakes, it has long process line with many equipment.

Bran, outer coat of a cereal grain—e.g., wheat, rye, and corn—mechanically removed from commercial flour and meal by bolting or sifting. Maize bran is extensively used as feed for farm animals.
Bran is used as food for humans (in cereals or mixed with flour in bread) to add roughage (i.e., cellulose) to the diet. It is also used in dyeing and calico printing.

The nutritional value of bran depends on the content of flour particles (the less flour and the more shell, the lower the nutritional value). The average composition of wheat bran is 14.8 percent water, 15.5 percent protein, 3.2 percent fat, 8.4 percent cellulose, 53.2 percent nitrogen-free extractive substances, and 4.9 percent ash. One hundred kg of bran contains 71–78 feed units and 12.5–13 kg of digestible protein.

The production capacity of the proposed plant is 300 kg per hour of corn flakes and would operate double shifts of 8 hours each for 300 working day.

The plant would come with a 100 MT capacity steel cone base bottom silo, for the storage and preservation of the raw material. The silo would come with a cleaning and transport system that would clean and transport the raw material to the processing plant.

Currently corn flakes are consumed by a portion of middle and upper income groups of the urban Nigerian population. Statistics revealed a high demand for cornflakes is increasing in Nigeria.

From our study, there is virtually no small scale commercial manufacturer of high quality corn flakes in Nigeria today. There are only two major companies producing cornflakes in Nigeria and their production output is very small to meet up with the increasing demand for cornflakes.

With a population of over 200 million people and an estimated national population growth rate of 2.4% per annum, Nigeria has a large market for corn flakes.