Fruit juice packaging business... A money-spinner

(Biz tool Kits)
BY BRIDGET OLOTU

Business Description
Fruit juice packaging business products made from choice fruits to the delight, entertainment, health and nutrition of consumers. Start-up cost as low as N10 million or more depending on the size of investment.
Can be jointly carried out with packaged water, as the machines for both businesses are almost similar.
• Potential first year earnings: N24 million
• Breakeven time from initial investment: very rapid (can be between 1 to 2 years)
• Future growth potential: very high
• Dynamic, fast-growing industry
• Possible for Small business or Cooperative-based organisations
• Not much staffing required, especially at the beginning
Now, the interesting world of fruit juice business is a whole breadth of product lines ranging from blackberry, apple, orange, pineapple, tangerine, banana, guava, mango, lemon, grape, coconut flavours/products, etc, or a combination of two or more of these fruits.

Fruit juice business in Nigeria
Nigeria is blessed with fruits of various shades, colours, names, multiple nutritional values, tastes, and health composition. However, we have not been able as a nation and people to exploit our fruit juice industry to the maximum.
My colleague and his mother visited their village in the eastern part of the country recently and he discovered that the grandmother’s orchard, which had been abandoned by the woman’s children — since every one of them now resides in the city — was littered with ripe but rotting fruit wasting away on the ground.
Fortunately, he and his mother were able to salvage some ripe ones on some of the trees, which they brought back to Lagos. The story is the same everywhere. We are wasting resources as a nation in every sphere of our human life. From Benue (which is incidentally, the Food Basket of the Nation) to Bayelsa, Aba to Abeokuta, our fruits are wasting away and denying us of the monetary and nutritional values they would have given us as a nation, industry and peoples. Fruit juice business therefore is an investor’s haven, as there are still untapped markets and opportunities in that industry.

Fruit juice products market
This market consists of three often-overlapping product classifications: Storage method, flavour, and juice content. The storage method classification includes refrigerated, shelf-stable bottled, frozen concentrate, aseptic, canned, frozen fruit juice bars, and shelf-stable liquid concentrate.
The flavour classification includes orange juice, fruit drink, apple juice, fruit juice blends, grapefruit juice (including 100 per cent grapefruit juice and grapefruit juice cocktails), tomato/vegetable juice, lemonade (including limeade), and grape juice. The juice content classification includes 100 per cent fruit juices and fruit drinks.

Packaged fruit market
The packaged fruit market consists of four product categories: Canned and bottled fruit; dried fruit; frozen fruit; and maraschino cherries. The canned and bottled category includes applesauce, peaches, pineapple, mixed fruit, pears, cranberry sauce, and citrus. The dried fruit category includes raisins, other mixed fruit, prunes, dates, and glazed fruit.

bridgetolotu@gmail.com




The Devil’s Highway
(Just Life)
BY OMOLIGHO UDENTA
SOME years ago, when I first started writing this column, I found myself often having to explain what it was all about.
After a while, I was able to fine-tune my response to questions about the column by saying, “Just Life”, is about life even if only it’s from my perspective. Some weeks I might find, really quite easily, topics to write about but some weeks are tougher. Some weeks all I have to do is just go about my normal daily stuff and usually something happens which can be built into a story. Some weeks I get the proverbial ‘writer’s block’ and need to really work at getting a story out.
I have also found that whilst some issues can be looked at humorously, some cannot. Issues like child abuse, breast cancer and a few others are really quite serious and should be treated as such.
Now, last week has been particularly tough because I came across something so horrifying I was left speechless. I, like many other Nigerians, came across the shockingly gory photograph of the robbery incident along Lagos-Benin Expressway, which many have said should be renamed ‘The Devil’s Highway’.
I don’t know how that would sound, you know, would anyone of us want to say to anyone ‘Oh, I’ll be travelling on ‘The Devil’s Highway’ tomorrow’? I know I wouldn’t.

IT was such a shock to see the extent some otherwise supposedly ‘happy’ Nigerians among us were willing to go to get money and how merciless they could be to those who didn’t have any.
The irony was that the robbers (who usually are thought to be people pushed by desperate circumstances to crime) could not find it in their hearts to have pity on those whose situation may very well be the same or similar to theirs. But then again, which robber (except perhaps Robin Hood) could be said to have a heart?
Some reports state that the photograph is actually an accident scene and not a robbery attack. Whatever it is, the fact is it’s horrible to even imagine such a thing could actually have happened.
For a long time now Nigerians have complained about the deplorable state of the road and the regularity that brutal armed robbery attacks occur on that stretch of road.
Not much has been done about it. Do we need Einstein to tell us that without jobs for the unemployed, security measures put in place and a provision of basic needs for all, this mayhem will continue?
And when we talk about more security on that road we do not necessarily mean more police checkpoints. There are already too many as is and all the policemen seem to be doing is lining their pockets and filling their stomachs.

PERHAPS, the government awaits a time when Nicodemus will predict the death of a few more thousand souls, which will hopefully include a few ministers and a handful of governors, perhaps, something will then be done.
But since this isn’t likely to happen, is there going to be any action then? We can do little else but to wait and see.

omoudenta@yahoo.co.uk