Smoked catfish business is an opportunity waiting to be tapped. How to start dried and smoked catfish business in Nigeria. Venturing into dried and smoked catfish business is indeed a big business with unimaginable potentials as those doing it are making serious money from it already.
Apart from having fish ponds which many has discovered to be like having an automatic ATM at their backyards, dealing on dried fish or smoked and packaged fish has become a serious income generator for those doing it in the right way. You can sell to the open market or supply to the supermarkets and stores.
With smoked cat catfish business opportunity in Nigeria, some office workers who got exposed to the income potentials of the business are busy today packaging numerous orders for their teaming customers both home and abroad. Yes! You can as well export it oversea and make quick dollars currency.
Starting smoked catfish business is very simple and even simpler than operating a fish pond which comes with additional stresses of making ponds, getting fingerlings, rearing and feeding them to market size which takes at least three months before selling them out to others in the market.
Dealing on dried and smoked catfish is a business with wider appeal. Put simply, all that is required for the business is: buying, processing, smoke drying it, packaging it in a branded polythene bag and having them out to the public.
Starting A Smoked Catfish Business Requires The Following
1. Get a smoke/drying machine from a good welder. The prices are usually dependent on the size of your choice but the assurance is that you can get it locally made if you are just starting out.
As your business increases, you can now go for more sophisticated ones of between N300-N500k and the good thing about this is that it is capable of drying good number of fishes quicker in an internationally acceptable way.
Again, as a big player in the market, you will also need NAFDAC approval which doesn’t really cost much if you follow the normal process in obtaining your permit. You have to follow the above steps for your products to be widely accepted, but if you are contented with playing small in the big industry, you may not bother implementing all those important strategies.
The Profit Potentials In Smoked Catfish Business
A kilogram of catfish goes between N400 to N600. Each of these costs about N100 to have it processed and packaged.
You can retail to your customers at the rate of N1,500 or more. You can as well take your goods to some supermarkets at the rate of N800 or N1,000 while they sell at any price of their choice.
Assuming that in a whole month, all you were able to dry and sell to your customers are just 1,500 packs and each sold at a moderate price of N1,000, now multiply that by 1,500 while you remove your cost prize per one which may be not up to N600, add up what you get and then compare it with what top average office workers are earning per month.
You see, there is good money to be made from smoked catfish if you handle it like serious business locally not to talk of expanding your business beyond the shores of this country.
With a place to use as your factory preferably in your compound with a good shade for your machine, going into the business may not even cost you up to N500,000 as such amount is capable of getting you an (ISO) machine for the drying and sealing of the fishes, a business name with CAC, and NAFDAC approval.
When you have all this done, be rest assured that your products would be accepted anywhere in the world!. N/B, Do not take your fish to the supermarkets with hopes of receiving your cash immediately, no they will not pay you unless your goods are sold but if you are able to meet up with the required standards and have your fish properly garnished, hygienically packed, appetizing to the eyes, that on it’s own would turn your products to hotcake in the markets making even the supermarkets to be paying you in advance.
As we talk about the profit potentials in dry catfish business, the demands for Nigerian dried catfish are even more in abroad but the simple truth is that the local market demands has not yet been met.
