Chinasa Njom

After a few years of work, Chinasa decided that she wanted to go to school part time and further her education in Food Technology. She saw it as a career path that provided her the  opportunity to complement the skills she had learned on the job. Since joining the company, she has learnt different skills including  data management, email communication, excel usage, as well as research and development of new products. Furthering her education was a dream that would not have been possible without being employed, as the company not only gave her the flexibility but offered her soft loans for her education. As challenging as it was, Chinasa juggled school and work and completed her degree. Her education, as well as her competence, has seen her rise up the ranks at ReelFruit. Today, she is an Inventory supervisor.

Chinasa’s  story is not an isolated one. There are quite a number of staff who began their careers at ReelFruit on the factory floor, still working with the company several years after because they are learning valuable skills on the job, while getting opportunities to specialize in certain aspects of agro processing, furthering their education and getting promoted. For ReelFruit,  upskilling employees has been instrumental in our business’ growth, and a mission we encourage wholeheartedly.

The need for targeted skills training

Nigeria is facing an unemployment crisis, with a large number of its youth having no access to jobs. On the other hand, Nigerian SMEs, particularly agro-businesses have their fair share of challenges but one that many have in common is the lack of employable candidates with soft and technical skills needed to scale their business.

There is a huge gap between the skills youth have and the skills industry requires. For this reason, unskilled Nigerian youth are often overlooked as ideal candidates for jobs, including entry level positions.

The future is even more bleak for post-secondary school candidates who lack not just skills but qualifications that most companies require for the basic job application process. Unfortunately, many of them do not have access to university education. This is why the ReelSkills program was conceptualized; to train  post-secondary school candidates on practical skills that develop them, offer them a path to employment and prosperity.  This skills transfer is also absolutely necessary for the growth of the SME sector and for economic development.

The ReelSkills Approach

Through the ReelSkills program, we are condensing our experience and knowledge based on 9 years of operations and will be focusing on key-sub sectors (Processing and Packaging, Field Sales and Distribution and Administration). These focus areas are grounded on the  market needs of growth-stage private SMEs in the agriculture sector.

The ReelSkills program aims to match and create 800 jobs for post-secondary school youth in the agri-business sector. This affords them the opportunity to increase their employability, as well as their earning potential over the lifetime of their careers.

The multiplier effect of the Reelskills program is building a pipeline of skilled agri-business talent and  fulfilling a workforce need and preparing post secondary school students for exciting careers in agriculture.

What Success Looks Like

Chinasa, who started on the factory floor, is among the select team of facilitators training the candidates on processing and packaging. We hope that our training not only equips young people for access to decent work in the agro processing sector, but breeds more people like Chinasa, who can gain valuable experience and share it with others.

The Reelskills program will be executed by ReelFruit in conjunction with Temploy and Made Culture. The program is funded by the Netherlands Government, under the Challenge Fund for Youth Employment (CFYE) programme.

Show me the Money!

One of the most exciting things to happen to us this year was getting funding of $3 Million to expand our business operations, which will see us expand our factory capacity 5X. This is a dream our CEO has kept alive for 9 years and it validates our business model and all of the hard work the ReelFruit team has put in. We are very excited about what’s to come.

A New Look!

In case you don’t know, our packaging went from 0 to 100 this year. Literally. The best part about it was the positive feedback we got from our customers. We knew we created magic but all the feedback validated the countless hours we put into creating a cohesive brand packaging, while ensuring each product stands out on its own. Shout out Evoke Lagos (our branding agency) for bringing our vision to life!

Moving to Our Permanent Site

In 2020, we ran out of space in our former HQ and after 3 years there, it was time to move again. We found our new home in the heart of Yaba and trust us, it was love at first viewing, after many months of searching. Our favourite thing about it is the potential to accommodate our growing team. We are going to be here a while .

Our First Ever Company Retreat

Whats a great way to recharge and re-strategize? A company wide retreat! Abeokuta was the perfect get away location for our first ever company retreat and not only were we able to plan for the rest of the year, we also had fun for the first time as a team. To put it into perspective, our team is sprawled across 3 regions and many team members met each other for the first time at the retreat! Another highlight of the trip was meeting former President, Olusegun Obasanjo!

Growing over 200% in One Year

What is better than matching the prior year’s revenue in just 7 months? Doubling the same revenue in 5 months! We saw an over 200% growth in our revenue this year and also expanded from being in 350 stores to close to 600 stores across Nigeria. We couldn’t be prouder of the Sales team for making it happen and constantly pushing their limit.

It wasn’t all roses and sunshine this year. We have had our fair share of challenges, we also had many challenges from the rising cost of raw materials and product stock outs, to our machines being stuck at the port for a whole Year! 2021 really threw everything at us but we hit the ground running every time. Every member of our team made it happen and we are excited to achieve more in 2022!

Thank you to all our customers who have trusted us and kept us in business. We wish you a wonderful festive season and a prosperous new year.

In 2018, 34-year old Muhktar Adamu planted 1,000 mango trees on his family farm in Barakallahu, a village 10 km from Kaduna in northern Nigeria. He took over the orchard from his father who forayed into growing “the king of fruits” 15 years earlier.

In the four years it takes for mangoes to begin fruiting, Adamu did what he thought was right for his fledgling trees. He invited a farm specialist when a disease broke out in the orchard. He applied herbicides and pesticides, admittedly on a trial and error basis. And, he sought advice from a friend in Ghana, renowned for its thriving mango sector.

Muhktar Adamu

Fast forward four years. One April morning, in the early days of the mango season, Adamu woke up to a harsh reality: only 10 of his 1,000 trees had produced fruit. A meager 1%.

Devastating losses like Adamu’s have a catastrophic impact on Nigeria’s mango sector. Without a steady mango supply, processors tend to stay away.

Most small and medium agri businesses, like ours, rely on small farmers like Adamu. In an ideal world, agri processors would plant their own orchards to secure their raw materials. While this is a less risky approach, orchards are eye-wateringly expensive to develop and maintain. They require massive investment. Given the length of time before mango orchards produce fruit and can mint money, investors aren’t keen to back commercial fruit farms. They aren’t clamoring to sink their capital – literally – into the ground for years.

[Side note: we still plan to grow 40% of our fruit supply but it’s a part of our long-term strategic plans. We’ve had our past misadventures in mango farming, which taught us a lot and made us rethink our supply chain strategy.]

Nigeria’s mango farming is beset with a chicken vs the egg problem.

Processors nix plans to enter the market due to supply issues. Yet, farmers won’t farm mangoes of a certain caliber and quantity if there are no buyers.

Facing only middle men and inconsistent demand, small mango farmers have bleak prospects to forge a prosperous future.

The sorry state of Nigeria’s mangoes

Nigeria’s mango farming has fallen into a sorry state. Over decades, serious buyers, like processors of fresh cut or dry fruit as well as juice manufacturers, have quietly closed up shop, leaving farmers without a market.

In turn, smallholder farmers can’t justify investing the time or money into a risky venture like cultivating mangoes.

This has resulted in a mango sector has stagnated, with old trees, old varieties and low bearing fruit.

In the absence of reliable statistics, it is tricky to estimate the number of mango farmers across Nigeria. But, over the years, we’ve crisscrossed the country from Benue to Kaduna to Niger States to assess the mango crop. We’d wager there are roughly 500 mango farmers across Nigeria.

It’s a tiny number.

Since mango farming is still an informal affair, record keeping is abysmal. Most farm managers keep records in their heads. Without written records, mango farmers can’t track the orchard’s history: its year-on-year production, flowering and fruiting times, or fertilizer application.

Not to mention if the farm manager passes away, the records go with him. On our last upcountry trip in July, we visited a farm where the farm manager had recently died. No one could answer our questions because the intimate knowledge of the orchard went with him to the grave.

This snowballs into a host of other problems.

Without accurate records, farmers don’t know when the trees reach maturity. Instead, they rely on nta go gi, intuition, to pick the fruits. They turn out to be either unripe or too mature.  For us, that’s a problem because it reduces the yield of high-quality fruit for processing.

An over grown Mango tree in Kaduna

In addition to record keeping, mango farmers do not know how to prune their trees. Without regular trimming of foliage, mango trees can tower up to 10m, almost five times their ideal 2.5m height to ensure optimal productivity. This creates a ripple effect at harvesting. Farmers do not pluck the fruit off trees once ripened. Rather they let them fall. Since the ripe mangoes drop from such a vertiginous height, they become severely bruised. That further reduces the yield of fruit we can dry and process for our snacks.

Inputs are also a problem area.

Farmers don’t have access to high quality and expensive inputs – fertilizers and pesticides.

Fertilizers are also a huge problem. Most small mango farmers use cow dung on their mango trees. This natural fertilizer might get the job done for other crops, but it’s a disaster for mango. The high nitrogen levels – from the cows’ grass diet – has a curious effect: the tree grows bigger, the foliage gets thicker, but the fruit isn’t sweet. A sour mango is not viable for processors.

The high quality inputs are half the battle. Mango farmers lack knowledge on controlling pests and disease. They try trial and error tactics to manage outbreaks which aren’t that effective.

Lastly, the common mango varieties in Nigeria are mostly untraceable and present peculiar processing challenges. Ogbomoso and Sheri mangoes, dotting the Nigerian countryside, have massive seeds and scanty flesh. The fruit is fibrous and stringy. This variety needs a lot of time and effort to peel and cut for drying but yields little output. High-quality varieties like Keitt and Kent mangoes are rare across the country.

Ghana gives a glimpse of a new future for Nigeria’s mangoes

Nigeria’s mango sector doesn’t have to look far for inspiration.

Ghana is proof that a struggling mango sector can be transformed.

Two decades ago, European fruit companies, Blue Skies and HPW, came to buy pineapples in Ghana. Once there, they scratched their heads and thought: what else can we buy?

Given that global demand for the king of fruits – so called for its high nutritional value and sweet flesh – was growing at 20-30% per year, mangoes were a no brainer.

HPW Mango Farm. Photo credit: HPW

With Blue Skies and HPW snapping up mangos across the country, Ghanaians soon flocked to the sector. Farmers invested time and resources into planting mangoes, as it was no longer a risky cash crop. In turn, buyers supported farmers with comprehensive agro-extension programs.

Fast forward twenty years. Mango farming is highly profitable in Ghana. From back of the envelope estimates, one hectare of mango with 200 trees generates $9,400 in total revenue. After 30% costs, farmers can earn $6,500 in profit.

Ghana’s mango sector is thriving. Ghana’s smallholder mango farmers have now risen to 6,000 and the country produces 55,000 MT of mangos per year.

Agro-extension programs were essential to transforming Ghana’s mango sector. To this day, HPW doesn’t own any land. It sources all its fruit from farmers, a testament to the success of its outgrower model.

How ReelFruit will revitalize Nigeria’s mango sector

At ReelFruit, we will only succeed in scaling our dried fruit snack business if we can make mango farming prosperous for farmers.

We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve received USAID grant to launch an agro-extension services program that will support over 200 Nigerian fruit farmers.

Locations visited for our Agro-Extension Project

By hiring field agents, we’ll teach our partner farmers the best agricultural practices to produce a consistent supply of high-quality mangoes. We aim to buy 750 MW of mangoes – or 38 twenty ton trucks –  in the 2022 season alone.

A constant stream of mangoes will not only keep our new Ogun State factory at full capacity, it will also dramatically increase the incomes of our partner farmers. Just like Ghana – whose mango sector was transformed by strong buyers – we hope our ambitious plans will revitalize Nigeria’s struggling mango sector.

Our agro-extension program

We want to do for Nigeria what HPW and Blue Skies did for Ghana: begin the process of breathing new life into the mango sector.

Backed by our USAID grant, we will tackle the root cause of the challenges facing mango farmers: knowledge.

To help us succeed, we’ve hired Mark Sarpong, a mango agronomist and expert, who will design and lead our agro-extension program. When we took Mark upcountry to visit our partner farmers, he was surprised by the state of the mango orchards. But, he also remarked, “This is where Ghana’s mango sector was over twenty years ago. There is no reason that Nigeria’s mango farmers cannot flourish.”

Mark Sarpong, Agronomist/Mango Expert

With Mark’s supervision, ten agents in five mango-growing states – Ekiti, Kaduna, Nasarawa, Adamawa, and Niger – will provide over 200 farmers with training on improved farming methods. Two agents will be assigned to each area and visit outgrowers regularly. Farmers will learn how to prune for maximum yield (no more monster trees!), apply fertilizers and ward off disease and pests with integrated pest management. They will be taught how to induce flowering to boost tree productivity and learn proper harvesting methods.

We’ll start our training with record keeping.  We want farmers to track their trees from blossom to first fruits. Farmers will learn how to detect the subtle signs of maturity. For example, once the lenticil – the raised pores in the stem – turn from white to brown, the mango has reached maturity and is ready to be plucked.

We have our work cut out for us. For too long, Nigerian mango farmers have been left to their own devices. But, these are the initial areas that we’ll focus on to wield the biggest impact.

Making mangoes prosperous for farmers

Despite his crushing experience, Adamu hasn’t given up on mango. He always saw its potential in Nigeria.

This year, he joined our farmer network.

Through our agro-extension program, Adamu will not only produce mangoes to supply our factory but will acquire the best agricultural practices to produce high-quality mangoes for export. He plans to expand operations on his farm – he’s even told us he wants to supply us with even different types of fruit. [How we love ambitious farmers!]

As an agribusiness, we grow in lockstep with our farmers.

They grow, we grow.

It’s that simple.

TL;DR?

Watch this video that summarizes the article.

LAGOS, 23 September 2021 — ReelFruit, a premium dried fruit company known for its high quality nutritious snacks, today announced a Series A investment of $3M. Alitheia IDF led the round and invested $2M while other investors included Samata Capital and Flying Doctor Healthcare Investment Company. The New Practice advised ReelFruit on the transaction. With the capital, ReelFruit will scale its dried fruit production, develop new products, and increase exports by 10 x to 15 MT in the first year.

Key to its expansion plans, ReelFruit will acquire a new factory in Ogun State to increase its monthly dried fruit production from 6 MT to 30 MT. The factory will hire over 200 people in its first year. With its greater supply of dried fruit, ReelFruit will continue to innovate new products for the local and international markets.

As part of its efforts to secure high quality raw materials, ReelFruit plans to  deepen its existing work with Nigerian fruit farmers. The company will form an agro-extension services program for 250 registered mango and pineapple producers. The program will boost fruit yields and help support a steady supply of high quality raw material for the factory.

To meet strong demand for its dried fruit snacks, ReelFruit will diversify its local and international sales channels. The company will launch an e-commerce channel for direct US sales by 4Q21. ReelFruit will also unlock more B2B opportunities including white-labelling and co-packing to support the national drive toward import substitution. Local buyers will be able to buy dried fruit locally thereby reducing dependence on imports. Reelfruit is already on track to double last year’s revenues by November 2021.

“This investment takes ReelFruit to the next level. We can meet increased demand for our products and tackle one of our biggest challenges – raw material supply. We’re thrilled that this will unleash a greater impact on our value chain by increasing farmer incomes and creating up to 300 decent jobs for Nigerians,” Affiong Williams, ReelFruit CEO/Founder.

“Alitheia IDF is proud to support ReelFruit’s ongoing efforts to boost food production in Nigeria and positively impact communities through deliberate partnerships with local farmers, distributors, and retailers. The investment will strengthen the company to unlock further growth, upskill farmers and improve economic outcomes for thousands of women who play a significant role in the production of ReelFruit’s products,” said Tokunboh Ishmael, Alitheia IDF co-founder.

The Start

ReelFruit’s journey has never been easy. From the company’s inception, we’ve always been fighting an uphill battle on several fronts: Introducing new products into the market people had never known before, trying to get our distribution right when no one wanted to distribute “new products” on our behalf, trying to scale a “premium” product…you name it, we faced it. We had to pick our battles, and packaging was not one we could fight consistently. To get brand uniformity is not just a time consuming process, it is also very expensive. You have to spend on packaging design, printing all new packaging at once, and writing off old packaging material. It is a huge capital outlay that we couldn’t afford till now.

As you can see below, our packaging design…umm progressively deteriorated (to put it mildly) as we chose launching and distributing new products in the market as quickly as possible over brand uniformity. In summary, we didn’t have the time — nor finances — to make the investment in brand uniformity.

The Process

After deciding to re-brand, we realized that a simple brand refresh wasn’t going to be enough. We had come to a point in our journey where we needed to rethink on our mission, vision, culture and our core values and reflect that in our new brand identity. We went through a process of workshops, culture surveys, focus groups to finalize and agree on who we are and what we stand for. We then decided to reflect this in our new brand identity, which was brought to life so beautifully in the most comprehensive brand book prepared for us by our brand agency, Evoke Lagos.

We’ve come a long way since 2012, both literally and figuratively. We’ve learned a lot along and have come into our own as a company with a clear mission and on a unique journey. We can’t share every detail in this article but here are the main reasons we decided to rebrand:

We were very dissatisfied with our visual identity.

We felt our former packaging had become dated and unrepresentative of the caliber of company we are building. Not only was it very scattered, our once ‘innovative’ packaging had now become obsolete and boring. It was clear we needed to do something visual to maintain our position in the market.

We wanted to unify our packaging

We realized that for the sake of brand consistency and trust, we needed to unify our packaging identity. Many customers were not aware of our full range because every product looked different from the other. Today, we have 16 SKUs, sold in over 350 stores nationwide. At a glance, our range was in no way uniform, which caused a shelving nightmare in stores.

The more we grew and expanded into new regions, it became abundantly clear that this was necessary. We wanted our customers to easily recognize all our products and know the full extent of our product ‘family.’

We wanted to present a global brand

For those who don’t know, we are extremely passionate about building a Nigerian company that can go global. This is reflected in our business pursuits so we wanted it to reflect in our packaging.

For us, it’s not just about communicating a better brand look and feel, but having our customers resonate better with our “why”

What next?

We’re still the same ambitious team working hard to push the boundaries and create unique products. We have 4 new products we’ll be launching soon and we can’t wait to share more about that.

Going forward, we will be more intentional about communicating to our community in the most authentic ways possible.

We look forward to continuing this journey…together.

P/S: Shout Outs

The rebrand has been a rewarding team effort, and we would personally like to thank our staff, our wonderful agency, Evoke Lagos, our investors, our board of advisors, and above all, customers. We are glad all parties are happy with the result. The feedback has been wonderful.