Focusing on Your Business
Recently, I visited one of the major poultry and swine producers in Central Russia. The company is very dynamic and growing rapidly. They have their own land where they grow different crops including soybeans.
As you may imagine, Central Russia is not the best area for growing soybeans. Local varieties with protein content are seldom above 30%. However, this prospect has committed to this crop and currently they have about 9,000 metric tons of beans in storage.
As we were visiting this existing facility, we started to think of some of the questions you need to think about before starting up a soybean processing facility:
- Customers – Who are they? What do they desire? Is there a need for this market?
- Capacity of the machinery itself – how much capacity do you desire and can the equipment chosen keep up with that demand? What happens if you choose to expand in the future?
- Additional expenditures outside of the major investment. As an example, you will need to purchase wear parts to keep the equipment functioning. What is the cost of these parts and their wear lives? Are these parts readily available? What will the electrical consumption be? What will your labor cost be?
- Desired end product – What is the desired end product? What is your competitive advantage of your product versus any competitors?
After discussing these points together, they found a small niche and are now looking into how they can emerge into this market.
It’s all about focusing on your skills and finding how your team can succeed.
