Animal feed machine prices across Africa: pellet machines and poultry feed mills — the real 2026 numbers
The bands by scale
| Scale | 2026 band (landed & commissioned) | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Small plant, 1–3 t/h | US$60,000–150,000 | Grinding, mixing, pelleting, cooling, bagging — a farm-plus or community mill |
| Mid-size plant, 3–10 t/h | US$250,000–900,000 | Batching automation, intake and storage — a commercial feed business |
| Industrial mill, 10–30+ t/h | US$1.5–4M+ | Integrator-grade tower mill with full automation and silos |
The step from the machinery cluster to the smallest working plant is not a mark-up on the same purchase. A pellet mill is perhaps a fifth of a feed plant, and what the rest of the money buys is the ability to make the same feed twice. Feed is a formulation product: its value sits in the consistency of the mix and the durability of the pellet, and both come from grinding fineness, batching accuracy and conditioning before the die — not from the press. A cluster of bare machines will produce feed; it will not reliably reproduce last month's feed, which is the thing a poultry customer is actually buying.
Choosing between the bands is really a question about who eats the output. Feeding your own birds makes the mill a cost centre, and the honest size is your own consumption with a little headroom — bagging, branding and a sales effort are costs you can skip. Selling feed makes it a different business: bagged product, a formulation you can defend, and enough tonnage to keep the plant busy, because a mill standing idle still carries its electricity connection and its people. Do that arithmetic before the shopping — a 3 t/h plant on a single eight-hour shift is about 24 tonnes a day, and those tonnes have to be sold as well as made.
For comparison, the listing-site tier: simplest ex-China clusters at 1–2 t/h trade at US$10,000–50,000, and 5–7 t/h equipment sets at US$70,000–250,000. Those numbers are honest for what they are — equipment ex-works. The gap between the two tiers is everything that makes feed actually come out of the building: intake, cleaning, electricals, installation, commissioning, and training.
The honest map by market
Read the map by raw material rather than by bird population. Feed mills are built where maize and soya arrive and then serve the flocks within reach, which is why intake and cleaning design moves project cost as much as pelleting capacity does, and why two mills of identical tonnage in different countries are rarely the same scope. The one real break in the pattern is aquafeed: floating fish feed is extruded rather than pelleted — a different machine family with different economics — so a feed-mill quote and a fish-feed-line quote are not comparable documents.
- Nigeria: the continent's largest poultry feed demand; local maize and soya intake design (moisture, cleaning, storage) moves project cost as much as the mill itself. Import mechanics in the Nigeria import guide.
- Zambia & Zimbabwe: strong stockfeed tradition and real maize-belt logic — pair this page with the maize milling guide, because bran off a mill is feed feedstock; landlocked landed factors ×1.45–1.60 apply. See Zambia and Zimbabwe.
- Tanzania, Ghana & Mozambique: poultry-led growth with aquafeed emerging around the lakes and coast — extruded fish feed is a different machine family in the same plant logic; see the agricultural processing page.
Silos, dryers and the rest of the plant
Feed economics are storage economics: a mill that buys maize at harvest price and stores it beats a bigger mill buying monthly. Grain silos, dryers and intake conveying belong in the feasibility arithmetic from day one — they are part of the scope we quote, not an accessory list. That whole-plant view, with the six cost blocks that sit around any equipment price, is laid out in what a production line really costs.
Drying deserves its own line in that arithmetic. Maize arriving above safe storage moisture cannot simply be binned — it has to be brought down to a level that will hold through the season, and in most of our markets that means a dryer rather than a good week of weather. Skipping it is the expensive kind of saving: spoilage and mould risk in stored grain carry through into the finished feed, and one batch failed on quality costs more than the dryer would have. Price intake, cleaning, drying and storage as a single item alongside the mill, because that is the order in which grain actually moves.
What buyers across our markets ask
Working plants: US$60,000–150,000 at 1–3 t/h, US$250,000–900,000 at 3–10 t/h, US$1.5–4M+ industrial (landed and commissioned). Bare ex-China clusters list at US$10,000–50,000 — machinery, not a plant.
Same bands by capacity; in Nigeria the Lagos corridor factor and intake design for local maize and soya are what move the total. We quote the whole scope in writing.
A listing prices a pellet mill. A plant adds intake, cleaning, grinding, batching, mixing, cooling, bagging, electricals, installation, commissioning and training — the parts that make feed actually come out of the building.
Sizing a feed business?
Tell us the species, the tonnage and the market. We'll come back with the scale you're actually shopping in — and a landed-and-commissioned number in writing.