While Nigeria’s over 45 per cent local fruits keep wasting away, South African farmers are making speedy advances in adding value to their farm produce a situation that has made Nigeria one of the largest consumers of their farm produce.
Greenway Farms, the largest carrot producer in South Africa, will start marketing its carrot juice in Nigeria, under a brand to be known as Rugani, from August.
The company, which produces about 40 per cent of South Africa’s carrots, recently, asked the public at the Johannesburg Fresh Produce Market to test seven variants of the juice.
“It was a successful attempt to find out what the public’s taste preferences were,” Vito Rugani, the owner of Greenway Farms, stated in the farm’s website. Rugani believed that the initiative would facilitate “a transparent pricing model.”
The website also quoted the marketing manager of Greenway Farms, Jenna Badenhorst, saying that the final installation work was being done at the large South African South juice plant.
Rugani said: “The factory will be an extension of the existing packaging plant in Tarlton, 75 km west of Johannesburg. The juice factory will produce about 145,000 litres of juice per week from about 240 tons of carrots.
To speculate how much juice we will produce is very dangerous. We are taking a chance with this expansion and hope for the best”.
According to a report, Greenway Farms currently sells about a million kilogrammes carrots a week in South Africa and other countries.
However, the large quantities of the produce in Zaria, Kano, and Jos cannot be exported to any country, leaving farmers poorer, hopeless and helpless.