Turning crops into products — at a rate that pays for the line.
Edible oil, grain milling, animal feed, and fruit & vegetable processing — the industry where line experience matters most, because the raw material is seasonal, variable, and unforgiving of a badly sized plant.
Four line families, sized to your crop.
Edible oil — pressing and refining
Cleaning, dehulling, pressing — and the refining train: degumming, neutralising, bleaching, deodorising. Refining is where projects stall and where our commissioning know-how earns its keep. Strongest demand: Tanzania, Africa's second-largest sunflower producer.
Grain milling
Maize and wheat mills in the 30–240 tpd class, from intake to bagging. Tanzanian milling-equipment imports grew 68.4% in 2024 UN Comtrade — the strongest signal in our footprint.
Animal feed
Grinding, mixing, pelletising and bagging lines — usually the second line for a miller, sharing intake and utilities. We size the two together when that's where you're heading.
Fruit & vegetable
Washing, sorting, cutting, drying, pulping and packing — matched honestly to your supply season and cold-chain reality.
The sizing question comes first. Agricultural lines fail commercially more often than mechanically — built too big for the crop supply, or too small for the contract. That's why every project starts with the feasibility and sizing work, and why we'll tell you if the honest answer is a smaller line than you asked about.
Maize mill and cooking oil plant prices across our six core markets.
A maize milling machine price in Zambia or Zimbabwe, an oil press machine price in Tanzania — the ex-China equipment band is the same across our markets; the landed leg and the grain or seed supply are what differ. All figures USD.
| Plant | Scale | 2026 equipment band | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maize mill (mill + packaging) | 30 t/day | US$250–400k | Size to monthly off-take; grain working capital on top — the silo cheque often beats the machine cheque |
| 60 t/day | US$700k–1.1M | ||
| 240 t/day | US$2.0–3.5M | ||
| Cooking oil plant | 20 tpd seed (pressing) | US$150–400k | Pressing sells crude; add the refining train and you're in the bottled-oil business |
| 50 tpd (press + refine) | US$400–900k | ||
| 100 tpd | US$700k–1.5M+ |
Apply ×1.25–1.45 coastal / ×1.45–1.60 landlocked for the landed-and-installed total. The sizing engineering is in our guides — maize mill sizing, sunflower oil line sizing, animal feed machine prices and the small food machine boundary — and each market's grain and seed picture is on its country page: Tanzania · Zambia · Zimbabwe · Ghana · Nigeria · Mozambique.
Eight agro-processing situations, by scenario
The situations we are asked about most in this industry, with the realistic tier, the 2026 USD band and the markets where each fits. The full map, with the conditions every line must meet and the guide that prices each situation, is at lines by scenario; the sixteen-country view is at production lines by country and line.
| Scenario | Realistic tier | 2026 band (USD) | Fits best in |
|---|---|---|---|
| First maize mill | 30 t/day mill + packaging | 250–400k | Zambia, Malawi, Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Kenya |
| Regional mill | 60 t/day | 700k–1.1M | Tanzania, Ethiopia, Uganda, Malawi, Kenya |
| Seed oil pressing | 20 t/day seed | 150–400k; refining 50 t/day 400–900k | Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Senegal, Ethiopia |
| Palm oil | 1–5 t/h plant | 100–390k; industrial from 1.7M | Nigeria, Ghana |
| Cassava, garri, attiéké | 1 t/day complete plant | 17–30k FOB; larger 100–270k | Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Nigeria |
| Feed pellets | 1–3 t/h | 60–150k landed | Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Malawi, Botswana |
Bands are indicative equipment capex in USD unless stated as landed and commissioned; they are the same bands our price guides and country pages publish. Machinery is priced in US dollars and the local-currency cost moves with the exchange rate.
What's your crop, and what should it become?
Tell us the crop, the region, and the product you want to sell. We'll size from there.