Fruit confectionery market

(Biz tool Kits)
BY AGBOLADE OMOWOLE
LAST week, we started our series on fruit packaging business. This is the concluding part. The fruit confectionery market also consists of four product categories: Jams, jellies and preserves; Fruit rolls, bars, and snacks; Pie fillings and Fruit butter.
Liquid fruit juice drinks
These come in four different forms:
• Frozen concentrate: This is diluted with water after purchase.
• Dry concentrate: This is also diluted with water after purchase.
• Reconstituted liquid: This has been concentrated but is diluted prior to sale.
• Unconcentrated beverage called Not From Concentrate (NFC).
The latter two types are also known as Ready To Drink (RTD) juices.

The Manufacturing Process
The process is as follows:
• Harvesting/collection
• Cleaning/Grading
• Extraction
• Concentration
• Reconstitution
• Pasteurisation
• Packaging/filling

Byproducts/waste control
Byproducts from fruit juice production come from the rind and pulp that is created as waste. Products made with these materials include dehydrated feed for livestock, pectin for use in making jellies, citric acid, essential oils, molasses, and candied peel. Certain fractions of orange oil, for instance, known as d-limonene, have excellent solvent properties and are sold for use in industrial cleaners.
Quality control
Quality is checked throughout the production process. Inspectors grade the fruit before the juice is extracted. After extraction and concentration, the product is checked to ensure it meets a number of the nation’s quality control standards.
Target market
• Individual consumers: Infants, school children, adults —. Young adults, nursing mothers, working professionals, etc.
• Corporate Consumers: Schools, business organisations, worship centers, marketplaces, eateries, posh and local restaurants, hotels, formal gatherings and events, parties and celebrations
Technical and other requirements
NAFCDAC’s registration is important and inevitable to operate in this industry. Some manufacturers of bottling water machines have made the machines in such a way it can be used for both water and fruit juice production. But this has to be done under stringent supervision and care to avoid contamination of both products.
Income Potentials
Let’s take for instance Lagos State with an unofficial population of about 18 million people (from the state’s website). If 25 per cent of this number take one form of bottled fruit juice product, this translates to 4.5 million potential customers. If this market consumes a bottle of fruit juice once a week, it means this market equals the sale of 18 million bottles a month and 216 million bottles a year from one state government in the country. Now, if you as a company produce 200 cartons of 12 bottles daily for 20 days in a month and 10 months in a year (to factor in capacity underutilisation) at N600 per carton, your monthly income would be worth N2.4 million and N24 million per annum and a profit in the region of about N11 million. Imagine if you’re selling your products in 6 more states in the country? And like I hinted earlier, you can combine this with your packaged water business.

Additional Information/Value Added
AS a value added for consumers, the addition of vitamins and other essential health-promoting minerals can help to further promote your brand in the market, making you the brand of choice for many Nigerian families who use your products for beverage and health purposes.
For space constraints, to make a success of this business, you’d need a comprehensive business plan to guide you in the area of marketing, branding, technical and business architecture for the business, etc, so you can experience competitive advantage from the start.
The Future
Future processing improvements are likely to come from the use of computer controlled sizing and grading of fruit. Fruit juice formulations will see changes as the trend towards adding more nutrition-oriented ingredients, such as antioxidants, vitamins and minerals, continues.
In addition, future formulas are likely to be blends of fruit juices with other more exotic fruit flavours, or even vegetable juices, like carrot, like what is being done by fruit juice producing companies in the country today.
bridgetolotu@gmail.com, Olotu is the CEO/Lead Consultant, DEAIM Innovative Resources Ltd.





You have all it takes
(Life Coach)
BY AGBOLADE OMOWOLE
JOHN Foppe, a renowned motivational speaker, has no hands. He has developed himself so much that he uses his leg to drive his car. His core message is that there is ability in disability.
In the context of this article, a disable is someone, who is not using his talents to make a positive difference in the world. Nobody is disabled except the person, who has not discovered his place in the world.

What limits you is you. There are no limits anywhere. We only have limits in our minds, based on how we have been conditioned from childhood. When you don’t challenge your proposed limits, you will limit your ability to perform and achieve extra ordinary results that are mind blowing.

You are here on a mission. I told participants that they are created to solve a problem, and not to be problem to others. In other words, there is something only you can do. There is a problem that only you can solve. There is a solution that only you can provide. You need to uncover all your latent talents.

Don’t limit yourself. If you don’t limit yourself, then nobody can limit you. No one can limit you without your own permission. Do all it takes to achieve your dreams. Fly. If you can’t fly, run. If you can run, walk. If you can’t walk, crawl. If you can’t crawl, get someone to carry you. By every positive means, make something of your life.

Discover the real you. Who you are today may be a shadow of the real you. The real you is a champion. The real you is a celebrity. The real you is a superstar. The real you is a hero. The real you is a winner. The real you is unstoppable. You may not look like a success now, but time will reveal the real you.

Create the future you want. Everybody leaves either by default or by design. Living by default means living your life the way it comes. If you wake up in the morning without a plan of how to spend that day, then you will be on the receiving end in the sense that things will happen to you.

Make things happen. You can either be the object or the subject in life. When you are the subject, you determine what exactly you want. You create the circumstances that you desire. When you are the object, someone else is in charge of your life. Decide to happen to things. Don’t wait for things to happen to you.

Be in charge of your life. Your life is your life, and when you don’t decide the kind of life you want to live, the society will decide it for you. Learn to live your own life positively. You can inspired by others. You can learn from others. But when you begin to look at other people’s life to determine your own, you are trying to become another person, and not you.

Focus on what you have. The way to become successful is by capitalising on those things that you already have to live a better life. What you don’t have, you don’t have. So it is important to commercialise what you have a natural flair for. If you like to sing, you can make money from singing.

Get customers. The profit you will earn from developing your natural endowment and making it profitable is dependent on how effective you are at getting people to be interested in your product/ services.

Learn to advertise. Let people know what you have to offer you and they will patronise you.
Take action. Marketing yourself is not about knowing what you can do to make money alone. You have to wake up earlier make some calls, some handbills and send some e-mails. By all means, market your skill, and then you will smile to the bank.

agboolaa_coach@yahoo.com