START SMALL, FINISH BIG! (TEA & BANANA PLANTATION TRANSFORMATION)

These were fledging industries
established during 1970’s but had been shut down.

However, these plantations are being
revamped under Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) Ltd and are currently
at different stages of progression. I had the privilege of talking to the
people who were working hard to turn these institutions around. I was
impressed with how systematic things were being done and I thought about how
this could be applied more especially when starting a business or project.

Seeing the two industries at different
levels of growth (banana plantation in 2nd year and tea plantation in
its 5th year) helped me have better understanding of what this transition
involved.

This started with the conversation I had
with the Project Coordinator for Banana plantation who gave me a general
outline of what their intentions where:

“We want to first start by meeting
the demand in the northern region before moving to meet Zambia’s demand then we can look at the exports market. After which we intend to open a
fruit factory for Mununshi.”

They had clearly defined milestones which they were targeting before adding or subtracting resources into the business.

Start Small

The banana estate started with same old infrastructure, a minimum
number of staff, machinery and only cultivated a small portion of their land
(20% of usable land). They had established a target for the 1st season to meet
a minimum threshold and as this was met, they were now going into the next
stage of the plan. The key threshold was meeting the minimum demand
(Luapula and Northern province). The next stage was to scale up to go beyond
that into the Zambian market. Once they succeed, they will
then scale up operations and target the export market. Setting up fruit juice producing plant
at the estate was in their future.

Finish Big

At the other end of the spectrum was
the tea plantation. Having gone through the initial phases which the banana
estate is going through (i.e., in its 5th year), it is now at a stage at which an
automated Tea processing factory was being set up with over 50% works done so
far. Several infrastructure (office building extensions, machinery, and human
resource) additions were underway as demand (market) dictated for
this level of investment to be made. They started small but were finishing big with building a tea processing factory at the plantation.

Lesson

The 1st lesson I got is if you
want to start a project or business, start with the minimum amount of resources you can use to start operating. Minimize overheads as much as possible. 

Can you make use of your home to work rather than rent an office? Can you use a low fuel consumption vehicle to save on transport costs?  

Don’t go rent at a shop or office at an expensive mall when you have not yet had a minimum number of sales or clientele (demand) to warranty that place.

Second lesson is rather than approaching new business from an angle of serving every potential customer in market, how about starting with those closest to
where you are? For example, you can start with your local neighborhood wherever you live (e.g. Kabwata, Chilenje, Chimwemwe, Matero, etc.) and serve those people well. Once you serve the local people well (meet demand) you can then proceed accordingly to you next neighborhood or bigger store to even serve more people.

Once your business is standing firm and
has become viable you can now think of investing in bigger space, human
resource, vehicles and other necessary resources to propel it to the next level of growth.

Do not despise small beginnings. It is not how you start that
matters, but how you finish. 

Start SMALL, Finish BIG!