‘I’m an English graduate and I sell meat. So what?’

How did you come about selling meat, how and when did you start the business?I have once worked with a farm called Integrated Diaries where they make yoghurt and since then I have been driven by a passion to do business. I started this business two years ago on a small scale with buying of […]

How did you come about selling meat, how and when did you start the business?
I have once worked with a farm called Integrated Diaries where they make yoghurt and since then I have been driven by a passion to do business.
I started this business two years ago on a small scale with buying of cow laps at the rate of N11, 500 to resell after which I make profit of over N2, 500 but as demand for the product increased, there was need to expand the business, which requires huge sum of money and this made me to partner with my uncle who is a veterinary doctor.
It was very difficult and challenging initially as I had to start with family and friends; telling them to stop buying beef from outside but from me. The response from the onset was good as I realised that people eat meat a lot.
So my driving force again was that I discovered that there is a huge market for beef that is ready to pay a little more. Though for now, I am sacrificing a lot to make people know what it is to eat hygienic meat. I am paying extra effort to make sure that we give people the best meat.  Now, I sell beef, do processing of beef, not the way the market people do it but in a more hygienic way for proper consumption to my clientele. Apart from doing corporate selling for companies or organisations, I also sell beef to individuals in the community.
What made you abandon your English certificate for sale of beef and what is your dream?
To me, studying English at the University is book while selling beef is passion, even though the English helps me to convince and encourage my clients to do business with me. I graduated from the Department of English Language in Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria in 2004 but I have never regretted not working in a corporate office because I am doing what I love to do.
That passion keeps pushing me and I will not stop until I have my international standard abattoir and the biggest meat processing factory in Africa.  I want us to be able to produce snacks like Gala in the north because we own the meat in the north.
  How and where do you get your animals?
We outsource for animals from healthy market mostly from the Fulani far north like Jigawa and also in some villages around Kasuwar Magani, Sabon Gaya and Kachia among others in Kaduna state. Sometimes, I travel to buy the animals myself and sometimes, I place an order since they already know the quality of what I want. The market for the animal is seasonal, there are times that the animals are cheap while they could be very expensive at another time but we are hoping for finance so that we can be raising the animals ourselves because it is cheaper for us to raise the animals, fatten them and prepare them for slaughter.
We buy bulls, we don’t slaughter female cow because of its tenderness. Also we buy middle aged animals. On the average, most of the cows we buy are between N85, 000 and N100, 000 depending on the size. We get between 65 to 70 kilos of boneless beef from a cow and we normally ensure that the butchers who slaughter the cow de-bone and remove the fat. Each kilo of beef sells for N900 but I sell at N850 per kilo to the company I supply beef to in Port Harcourt, that is, Seasons Pyramid while they pay for transporting the beef using cold trucks.
We also supply them boneless beef, kidney, ‘shaki’, head of cow, tail and the legs among others. In every trip, we supply goods worth N1.8 to N2million and we make such delivery twice in a month. About 15 to 17 cows make up a delivery.
How is your profit like in this business?
We make profit of between N250, 000 to N300, 000 monthly from this business, though we are still trying to see how we can work on the profit margin so that by the time we start raising the animals ourselves and fattening them to the desired weight, we will be cutting down about 40% of what we are spending now.
What is the secret of your business and what makes your meat different from others?
After slaughtering the cows, we freeze the meat for three days, we hire a cold truck, weigh the meat and then load it inside the truck and transport it to Port Harcourt. My driving force has been my passion to be different as a woman and the fact remains that I love cow. I just got very interested in special parts of the cow and how lucrative the cow can be. Nothing goes wasted in the cow, from the blood, which is used for blood meal for fishery to the filth in the stomach, which is used as manure, the horn which people always wait to buy at the abattoir for making traditional ornaments and also for musical instrument.
Also the abattoir we use to slaughter and prepare and beef, that is, Gashfa Farms, which is 22km along Kaduna/Abuja Express Way is a selling point for our business.
Gashfa Farm has the best abattoir in the north. The abattoir is of international standard, we may not have got to the level we want but the abattoir is almost like the best. It is well built, very neat, has marble tiles around, no sand on the slaughter floor, well organised as there is specific uniform and shoes for entering the abattoir while your hair too must be covered.
So from the process of buying the animal down to the slaughtering and preparation of the beef for sale prove that it is of a high quality.
Again, my uncle whom I am partnering with  is a Veterinary Doctor, he checks the animals before we buy and we don’t slaughter our animals almost immediately after buying, we make them relax which gives the best quality of meat.
 What are the challenges associated with your business?
They are enormous due to the perishable nature of the product. Kudos to people who sell meat in the market because it is a perishable good. The biggest challenge we have is storage and because of that we spent about N3million to build a trailer size of cold room so that the goods don’t go bad. A two tonner cold room cost about N1.5million. Epileptic power supply is also another big challenge which makes us spend a lot in buying diesel to power the generator because the beef has to be frozen before we transport it out.
Another challenge is moving from one state to the other or from one village to the other in search of healthy animal. Initially I go with a man because the work is generally known to be a man’s work but because I am determined, I kept going because I wanted to break the gender difference. We intend to get more clients to do business with us but finance is a major challenge. It is expensive to run the business on a large scale but on a small scale, one could run it using a deep freezer and then N12,000 to N13,000 to buy a lap of cow for a start.
 What is your advice to Nigerians especially the youths?
They should strive to do something, not necessarily office work. However, Nigerian women must not underestimate what they can do; determination is the key to success just as my determination and perseverance has made me to achieve a lot from this business. We all cannot work in corporate offices but there are a lot of corporate things we can do with our hands, so whatever your hands find doing, do it well.