How To Start A Profitable Cold Room Business

Cold room business happens to be one of the most multi-billion naira businesses in Nigeria. A good business that one can easily invest in and will yearn for massive profits in return. There are so many multi-millionaires in the country today who have made their money from the cold room business.

Cold room involves the selling of preserved food items, when one talks about cold room business, what comes to mind is frozen food such as; chicken, fish, turkey, shrimps, prawns, and other seafood.

There are other products one can still sell in their cold room business and this includes; ice-cream, ice block, yogurt, and other food items that can be refrigerated.

How To Start A Profitable Cold Room Business

Let’s now look at the basic requirements to start a cold room business.

Decide On The Scale To Operate

First of all, before making that decision to start a cold room business, you need to decide on what scale you would like your startup to be.

You can decide if you want to start on a large scale, where you would package or import your own products or you could start on a small-scale level, out-source your supplies and sell to customers.

Decide On Products To Sell

Once you have determined the scale you want to operate, the next step should be the type of frozen products you want to package, import, and sell.

It is advisable that you do a proper market survey to determine what item sells the most. Let me tell you for free that frozen chicken, turkey, and fish are the fastest-selling products out there.

Here is a little secret, although there are strong competitors in this business, you are bound to gain a competitive edge if you add other products to your list – like, seafood, for instance, a lot of cold room businesses don’t really sell those, they might have it on their product list but they do not sell it.

So if you can import or get a supplier to supply you with good seafood, guarantee you will create a name for yourself, because a lot of people crave and love buying seafood.

How To Source For Your Supplies?

You have decided on the products to sell, the next line of action is determining how/where to get your goods from. This is essential to the success of your business, so careful planning and decision-making are crucial.

Let’s say you want to package your own products (like frozen food such as turkey, fish, or chicken), you could either start a poultry farm where you will raise the live stocks, slaughter and packaged them yourself or you could out-source by importing the live stocks and other seafood.

Get a Good Location

Location is everything in business and a good location contributes hugely to the success of a business. You have to look for a good warehouse or a store that is In a strategic position in town, spacious enough to take in your cold room facilities, and ensure that the place has access to ventilation so as to properly preserve your products.

Access to Electricity

Steady access to electricity is one of the criteria of this business. In Nigeria, it is a known fact that you cannot rely on the supply of electricity from the government agency in charge.

In order words, you have to provide your own electricity, that’s, get yourself a good standby generator to provide constant access to light and to always keep your products in good condition.

Register the Business

It is important that you register your business with the appropriate government agency in charge of consumable food items. One such agency in Nigeria is the NAFDAC (National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control).