Innovative Folorunsho builds on his technological prowess
Over the years, he had been nurturing the ambition of being an entrepreneur. This propelled him to devote his time to consuming a lot of books, surfing the internet and engaging in fruitful discussions. He also associated with worthwhile mentors and attended lots of seminars. All were in order to acquire the skills necessary for him to be a successful entrepreneur.
Fawole Folorunso is the chief executive officer of Tosmat Foods & Agro Products, an indigenous company based in Oyo State. A mechanical engineering graduate from Kwara State Polytechnic, Fawole joined a fabrication company in Lagos in 2004 where he worked for nine years before opting out to test his entrepreneurial skills in 2013.
For him, that bold step was indeed the greatest risk he had ever taken. “I left a paid employment of seven digits annual salary to establish something new. It was moving from a secured job to an adventure and novel experience; one I had signed into as my new career but without being hundred percent sure of its outcome. Fortunately for me, my wife, who is the managing director of the company, was one of the YOUWIN awardees”, he said. Stressing that the support from YOUWIN and the pool of resources he had accumulated over time helped in bringing about the realization of his entrepreneurship dream. YOUWIN, short form for Youth Enterprise with Innovation in Nigeria, is an innovative business plan competition by the Federal Government of Nigeria aimed at job creation by encouraging and supporting aspiring entrepreneurial youth in Nigeria to develop and execute business ideas.
Fawole believes strongly in innovation, which according to him, enables one to do things in a better, efficient and effective way. “I saw the process and manner in which garri is produced locally and I felt it could be improved on through the use of machines. My quest to making a difference brought about my involvement in it because I believe there are better ways of doing things”.
That desire to create something different and add value to it was what gave birth to Tosmat Foods & Agro Products. Tosmat is a garri processing company employing the use of modern day techniques such as fryer, peeler, grater, presser, sifter among others. The company which started in November 2013 has come a long way, with 10 permanent staff on its payroll and 25 casual workers. It is also experiencing a commendable monthly turnover in the range of N1.5m and N1.6m.
Despite the commendable growth of the business which is in its eight year of production, it still grapples with the epileptic infrastructures prevalent in the country. Fawole is of the opinion that doing business in Nigeria is really challenging. “For instance, erratic power supply is one of the major challenges that businesses face in Nigeria. I believe our government can still do more to support entrepreneurs by providing basic amenities that will ease the burden of emerging businesses, as well as, existing ones. The state of our infrastructure as a nation is a huge burden on both individuals and corporate organisations. It is the major reason made in Nigeria products seem to be very expensive”.
Fawole enthusiastically takes us through his production line, starting from raw material to finished product.
“For our garri, we buy freshly harvested cassava from the local farmers after which it will be delivered to our factory. On getting to our factory, we sort out the good ones that will eventually be used for our garri processing. The sorted out cassava are peeled both manually and with peeling machine. (The essence of the manual peeling is to be able to gainfully employ the local indigenes). The peeled cassava is then washed in clean water; thereafter, it is transferred to a grating machine. The grating machine grates the peeled cassava into mash. The cassava mash is then put in polypropylene sacks for a period of 5-7days for fermentation to occur. After fermentation, the water in the mash is pressed out with the aid of hydraulic presser. The cake from the presser is then sent into a pulverising machine to disintegrate the cake. After disintegration, the product is sent into automatic garri fryers. After frying, the garri is poured into cooling bowl overnight, so as to cool the garri. After cooling, the garri is sieved using a vibrating sifter in order to remove the coarse garri (Koko garri) from the garri grain size that we want. From there, the garri is sent into the packaging section, where it will be packed into the various sizes and stored. For Extra fine gari (lebu), the process is almost the same with garri, only that the product from the cooling bowl will be milled in hammer mill before it proceeds into packaging and storage section. The raw materials (cassava) that we use are freshly harvested cassava, and they are processed on the same day, so, no need for preserving the raw material. On the other hand, the finished products that are already packed are stored on pallets in the storage section”.
Due to the huge amount of cassava needed for production, Tosmat is in partnership with many farms, and individual farmers. This is to guaranty continual supply of cassava to the factory. According to Fawole, “presently, we source our raw materials (Cassava) locally from farmers whom we are in partnership with, pending the time that our cassava will be matured enough for harvesting. We have our farm but it is not enough, we are still sourcing for more lands to increase our cassava plantation. We have the capacity to process 10 acres of cassava farmland on a monthly basis.
Though the products are for export, attention and concentration right now is on expanding and building Tosmats’ local presence here in Nigeria. “Distribution of the product is done mainly through distributors and wholesalers, and they are nationwide. But we are producing for people and companies that are already exporting garri.”
To succeed in this kind of business, Fawole said one must have a good business strategy, uncompromised quality, effective sales/marketing network, good customer relationship and dedicated staff. Also, nearness to the source of raw material is of paramount importance. Tosmat is working tirelessly to achieve its desire to be one of the biggest food processing companies in Nigeria, with focus on producing high quality garri.
The young entrepreneur is already projecting where Tosmat will be in the next five years. He hopes for an expansion of Tosmat’s product base to include the likes of odourless ‘fufu’, ‘tapioca’, ‘ogi’ powder (pap), yam flour and many more, which will catapult them to the zenith.
Tosmat presently has an average production capacity of 1ton/day of garri, “invariably we process an average of 4 tons/day of raw cassava. This translates into processing about 100,000kg of cassava on a monthly basis. Tosmat has two flagship products, Tosmat Garri and Tosmat Extra Fine Garri (Lebu) and they are packaged in different sizes of 1kg, 2kg, 5kg and 10kg. Packaging and printing is outsourced to a reputable packaging company. We are still increasing our capacity” stated Fawole.
Apart from processing garri and extra fine garri (Lebu), Fawole is into fabrication of agro-allied equipment. These are equipments used in food production and processing. According to him, all the pre and post processing equipments currently in use at Tosmat were fabricated by him. Fawole also consults for persons interested in setting up small scale food processing business.
But he insisted that a taste of Tosmat Garri is all you need to appreciate a made in Nigeria product.
Mabel Dimma