MPENDADZUWA COOKING OIL.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY…………………………………………………………………………………….3

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND……………………………………………………………………...3

PRODUCTS AND SERVICES………………………………………………………………………………………3

MARKET OPPORTUNITY…………………………………………………………………………….……………4

OPERATION PLAN……………………………………………………………………………………………………5

FINANCES……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….5
THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.

Mpendadzuwa cooking oil manufacturers, as the name suggest will be a limited company that will be
involved in producing cooking oil from sunflower (mpendadzuwa). The business is expected to be one of
the leading cooking oil manufacturers in Malawi by manufacturing cheap, affordable, well packaged and
high quality cooking oil from sunflower. The company is expected to grow at a high speed because the
primary target will be individuals from the village (who cannot afford the current price of cooking oil)
and because sunflower is widely adaptable and more drought tolerant than other grain crops which is
significant in the context of Malawi where 90% of all agricultural production is still rainfed and irrigation
is rarely available (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) 2019). The business
will grow by expanding its market share from just targeting rural Malawians but also those in the urban
areas and finally it will engage in exporting its products. Apart from just providing cheaper cooking oil it
will also provide other benefits such as; Job creation: this will be achieved by having farmers to be
producing the raw materials (sunflower), others will be working in the factory, others will be involved in
distribution and packaging and transportation and others will be sales personals. It will also provide
readily available markets for raw materials. And since the raw materials will be locally produced and
purchased the products will be made cheaper and this will mitigate issues of malnutrition in rural areas
and it will also help the country in its 2063 vision by proving employment, paying tax, improving on
infrastructure development and by being involved in various corporate social responsibilities.

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

Owned and run by Oleriano Phiri a 25-year-old 4 th year bachelor of Agriculture Education student at
LUANAR, Mpendadzuwa cooking oil manufactures will be procuring locally grown sunflower and then
pressing it into cooking oil. This company which will primarily target rural areas will be there to solve the
problem of pricing and accessibility. The available cooking oil is not easily accessed due to high prices.
The company will be different with those providing the same product in such a way that it will be purely
Malawian (with the raw materials accessed locally) labor force accessed locally

PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

As already mentioned the company will be involved in purchasing sunflower from local farmers, which
will be pressed into cooking oil. The company will adopt a cost-plus pricing model, this model is
relatively straightforward as it involves calculating the total cost of materials, labor overhead that will go
into making of the product and then adding markup so to earn a profit. As one renowned associate
professor in Marketing Eric Dolansky of University of York in Canada said “pricing is one decision that
shouldn’t be driven by accounting, when considering your price, it’s important to realize that it’s not for
yourself but your target customers,” hence the chosen model.
MARKET OPPORTUNITY

According to the survey conducted by National Statistical Office in 2018, 84% of the total population in
Malawi dwell in rural areas, the total population at that time was 17.563,749. In Malawi people who do
live in rural areas are those not living in the major cities of Blantyre, Zomba, Lilongwe and Mzuzu and
other towns and Bomas and gazetted town planning areas, so there is a huge business opportunity for it.
One of the players in the industry is Soyola cooking oil situated in Lilongwe which manufactures cooking
oil from soya been, there is also Kamwendo Cooking Oil Cooperative situated in Nchinji (central region
of Malawi) it operates under Nchinji District Council and it produces Thanzi Cooking Oil. Kukoma Cooking
Oil manufactured by Capital Oil Refining Industries (CORI) situated in Blantyre (southern region of
Malawi), there is also Mulawe Cooking oil manufactured by Sunseed Oil Limited situated in Lumbadzi
Lilongwe (central region of Malawi) and Kazinga Cooking Oil manufactured by Kazinga industries
situated in Lilongwe. According to Consumers Association of Malawi (CAMA) Director John Kapito said
that Cooking Oil is expensive because most of the local manufactures tend to buy crude oil (one of the
raw materials) from their countries of origin since most of them are not purely Malawian, he said that
Malawi has a huge technical expertise supported by many graduates from our technical colleges and
universities that can be empowered with resources to go into production and create linkages with our
farmers to start producing locally Malawian Cooking Oils www.nyasatimes.com . This is exactly what
Mpendadzuwa Cooking Oil manufactures will implement which will ultimately reduce Cooking Oil prices.

MARKETING PLAN

The product will be sold on wholesale because it is less costly to do so and also because wholesale
allows you to reach a wide range of consumers (this is vital in our case because our consumers-mostly
people in the rural areas- are not easily accessed by the other players). Some of our customers have
access to internet so to reach them we will implement heavy use of digital marketing tools like having a
website where our contact details, map to our factory, a description of who we are as a business,
testimonies from other customers, a call to action- where the customers are told what to do in clear
tones and the design and style of website will be friendly to our customers. Apart from the website we
will also increase our social media presence by creating pages on platforms like Facebook, Twitter,
LinkedIn and Instagram and engage popular social media sites like Mikozi to help us in adverting our
product. And email marketing strategy will also be employed- this is where emails are sent to customers
on daily basis to get their attention. As already indicated most of our customers are from rural areas so
running commercials on community radio stations will be heavily prioritized, for example Kasungu
Community radio for customers in Kasungu, and Zodiak Broadcasting Station (ZBS) which is country wide
and it reaches the remotest areas will also be heavily used.
OPERATIONAL PLAN

The cooking oil will be manufactured by extracting the oil from sunflower seeds, the machine is
specifically designed for oil extraction and its cost including that of shipping from China is $3500
(K3,560,536) The factory will be located where resources are easily accessible and where also it will not
be far from our customers (consumers) and the ideal place is between Nchinji and Lilongwe Districts
(Nchinji Road). Since there will be maximum supervision by the owner and the work will not require
much of critical thinking, so hardworking, dedicated, passionate boys and girls between the ages of 25-
30 with a minimum qualification of a form 4 leaving school certificate will be recruited. The company will
grow by re-investing its profits in the business, until it exhausts the central region of Malawi then the
whole country then it will start exporting.

FINANCES

Currently the owner has maize available worth $330 (K335,707), so if the maize is sold the difference is
$3170 (3,225,828), so this is the amount that will be required. Currently the owner does not have any
funds in his account. The machine is able to produce 1000 litres in a day and it presses 500kgs/hour and
4 kgs of sunflower produces 1 litre of cooking oil.