Agro-processing lines in Africa, scenario by scenario: milling, oil, feed, cassava and the tier that fits each market

The conditions that apply in every market

The scenarios, one by one

Scenario 1: a first maize mill

Thirty tonnes a day at US$250–400k in mill and packaging equipment, for up to about 700 tonnes of meal a month that you can actually sell. Oversizing is the most expensive mistake in this family and the reason a 60-tonne mill runs two days a week. Maize milling machine prices carries the three tiers; starting a mealie meal business in Zambia walks through the first mill in that market.

Oversizing is the expensive mistake because a mill earns on what it sells, not on what it can grind. A 30 tonne-a-day mill running one comfortable shift against secured offtake beats a 60 tonne-a-day mill running a third of the time: the larger plant carries more capital, a bigger grain buffer and a payroll sized for shifts it is not working. Grow into the next tier on demonstrated sales, not on a projection.

The two things to settle before the mill tier are grain and meal. Grain has a season and a price that moves with it, so working capital — not equipment — is usually the binding constraint; meal has a shelf life and a distribution radius, so the sales plan has to empty the warehouse on a schedule. Both belong in the feasibility before the machine list.

Scenario 2: a regional 60 tonne-per-day mill

Two to three shifts, a branded product, two to four weeks of grain buffer and a team of eight to fourteen, at US$700k–1.1M. Tanzania, Ethiopia, Uganda, Malawi and Kenya carry this row on their country pages; it is a different business, not a bigger mill.

This tier is a branded business, and branding brings obligations the entry tier does not have. Several markets require fortification of maize meal, which adds a dosing system, a premix supply and a record the regulator can inspect; packaging moves from bulk to printed bags, which adds a supplier and a stock item. Neither is expensive on its own, and both are awkward to retrofit.

Running two or three shifts also changes the maintenance question. Roll and sieve wear is proportional to hours, so at this tier a planned maintenance window and a wear-part stock replace the entry tier's habit of fixing things on Sunday. A mill that cannot stop is a mill that will stop at the worst moment.

Scenario 3: sunflower and seed oil pressing

A 20 tonne-per-day seed line at US$150–400k, 50 tonnes a day with refining at US$400–900k, 100 tonnes a day at US$700k–1.5M and above; the screw press under US$10k produces crude oil only and is a machine, not a line. Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Senegal and Ethiopia ask this most. Oil press machine prices sets out the tiers and the seed yield arithmetic.

The screw press under US$10,000 is the clearest example in this guide of a machine that is not a line. It produces crude oil and cake; what it does not produce is a filtered, labelled, shelf-stable product, and the gap between the two is filtration, settling, storage and packaging. Buyers who start from the press usually end up buying the rest of the line twice.

Refining is the real step change. Pressing sells crude oil and cake to other processors; press-and-refine sells a bottled product to consumers, and it brings a different plant, a different quality regime and a different customer. The seed catchment has to support it: the higher tiers need thousands of tonnes a season, contracted, and that is usually the constraint rather than the equipment.

Scenario 4: palm oil in West Africa

Single machines from US$950, one to five tonne-per-hour complete plants at US$100–390k by capacity and scope, and industrial mills at ten tonnes an hour from US$1.7M. Nigeria and Ghana are the markets, and the fruit-bunch supply radius decides the plant. Palm oil machine prices covers the tiers.

Palm oil is timing before it is machinery. Fresh fruit bunches deteriorate within about a day of harvest, so the mill's location relative to the plantations, and the transport that connects them, decide both oil yield and free fatty acid content — which is to say, the price the oil fetches. A larger mill further from the fruit can be worth less than a smaller one beside it.

The tiers differ in what they recover as much as in throughput. Single machines press; complete plants at one to five tonnes an hour sterilise, thresh, press and clarify; industrial mills add kernel recovery and effluent handling. Each step up recovers more from the same fruit, which is the argument for scale where the fruit supply genuinely exists.

Scenario 5: cassava, garri and attiéké

A one tonne-per-day complete garri plant at US$17–30k FOB, mid-size commercial sets at US$15–50k, larger capacity at US$100–270k with about US$180k at the one tonne-per-hour class. Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire and Nigeria are the markets; root supply radius and drying energy decide the business. Garri processing machine prices and starting a cassava business in Ghana cover it.

Cassava sets the clock. The roots begin to deteriorate within a couple of days of lifting, so the plant is sized to what can be harvested and delivered inside that window, and the radius around the plant matters more than the machine list. This is why a one tonne-a-day plant next to the farms can out-earn a larger one placed for the road.

Garri and attiéké are different products from the same root, and the difference is fermentation and grating discipline rather than equipment class. Both need a hygiene boundary and a drying step that holds moisture within spec, because moisture is what decides shelf life and therefore whether the product can be sold beyond the local market.

Scenario 6: animal feed pellets

One to three tonnes an hour at US$60–150k landed and commissioned, three to ten tonnes an hour at US$250–900k, industrial plants from about US$1.5M. Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Malawi and Botswana carry the small line on their pages; formulation and raw-material supply decide whether it pays. Feed pellet machine prices gives the tiers.

Pellet quality is a conditioning question, not a die question. Steam conditioning before the die is what gelatinises the starch and gives a pellet that survives handling; under-conditioned pellets crumble into fines, and fines are feed the animal does not eat and the customer does not pay for. That is why the step from the small tier to the mid tier is mostly conditioning and dosing, not press size.

The commercial driver is the formulation, which means raw materials. A feed mill buys maize, soya, bran and micro-ingredients and sells a specification; margin comes from buying well and dosing accurately, so automated batch dosing with a micro-ingredient system earns its place long before extra tonnes an hour do.

Scenario 7: cold chain for a packhouse or processor

Chiller rooms at US$15–38k installed and blast freezers from US$60k, sized on throughput and dwell time, are what make a packhouse saleable to a retail or export buyer. Cold room prices covers the sizing and the power.

A packhouse is sized on two numbers that are easy to merge: how much arrives at once, and how fast it must come down in temperature. A chiller room holds produce already cooled; pulling field heat out of a delivery against the clock is a different duty, and sizing on room volume alone produces a cold room slowly spoiling what was put in warm.

Cold chain is also what makes the rest of the operation saleable. Retail and export buyers audit temperature records, so the room, the monitoring and the backup are part of the commercial case rather than an overhead — and in a market with scheduled interruptions the backup has to carry the compressors, not just the lights.

Scenario 8: recovering an idle mill or press

Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique have mills and presses standing idle; recovery at US$60–250k or a used-equipment solution at 40–60% of new is the first question before a new plant is priced. New, used or recover sets out the ladder.

An idle mill or press is the cheapest capacity in these markets and the hardest to value, because what stopped it is rarely visible. A missing part, an obsolete controller, or the operator who left with the know-how all look the same from the gate. A structured assessment — what still runs, what is missing, what is obsolete — is what turns a guess into a number worth acting on.

Where recovery wins is time. A recovered mill can be producing in weeks where a new one takes months to manufacture and ship, and in a business tied to a harvest season that difference can be worth more than the difference in capital.

The map on one table

Bands are indicative USD, 2026, on the basis stated in each row; 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 a CISH project includes

The same scope in every market: a feasibility call that starts from the crop you can buy and the product you can sell, a written USD budget for the whole project including storage and power, a plant commissioned to an agreed output on your crop, operators trained during run-up, and documentation handed over.