writing a poultry business plan in nigeria — Photo by **Artem Beliaikin** from **Pexels**

Over the few years alone, we have hundreds of entrepreneurs and business owners create a poultry business plan in Nigeria.

On this page, we will first give you some background information with regards to the importance of business planning for starting your poultry. We will then go through a poultry business plan template step-by-step so you can create your plan today.

If you’d like to quickly and easily complete your catering business plan, click here to get a copy of our proven poultry business plan template and complete your business plan and financial model in hours.

What is a Business Plan?

Simply put, a business plan is a road map. It grants you a snapshot of your poultry business as it stands today and exhibits your growth strategies and potentials for the next five years.

A poultry business plan explains your business’ goals and your strategy for reaching them. This also includes market research and industry demystification to support your plans.

Why you need a Business Plan for your Poultry Business

If what you want is to grow your existing poultry business or perhaps you are a start up fresh to the business, you need a business plan. This document will assist you to do a lot of things in the course of your company’s lifespan.

For example, good business plans attract investors and raise funding, if needed. The plan also shapes out the growth of your poultry business in order to improve your chances of success.

Finally, do not be misguided to think that once you are done with the plan once, that is all. Your Poultry business plan is a living document that should be updated annually as your company evolves and grows.

Source of Funding for a Poultry Business

Well, it always come down to money at the end doesn’t it. When it comes to the issue of financial dependence for most poultry companies in the country, the major sources of funding for the business are savings and/or credit cards of the business owner, bank loans and angel investors.

To obtain bank loans, banks will want to examine your business plan and gain confidence that you will be able to repay your loan and interest. The loan officer will want to confirm that your financials are reasonable.

A professional plan should answer all or most of their questions. Such a proper plan will give the loan agency more confidence that you can successfully and professionally operate your business.

Another common form of funding for poultry businesses is angel investors. These are wealthy individuals who fund business ventures. They will either grant you a direct loan like a bank or take equity in return for their funding.

These days, another new funding model for agro-based businesses called crowdfarming is scaling up in Nigeria. Basically, crowdfarming involves sourcing funds from a crowd of individuals to invest in smallholder agricultural businesses in return for a stipulated ROI over a designated period of time. Some tech startups involved in enabling the growth of crowdfarming enterprises in Nigeria include FarmCrowdy, ThriveAgric, amongst others.

However, depending on the scale your business is at, certain investors would not fund a small business. These sharks and venture capitalists might consider funding a poultry company with multiple locations or a massive footprint, but never an individual location.

The simple reason for this is that most venture capitalists operate money at a scale that requires they make millions of dollars in return when they make an investment. A small poultry farm run by a lone farmer in a cramped location could never achieve that.

Poultry Business Plan Template

Your plan should include the following sections:

Executive Summary

Even though this part of your plan comes first, it is normally the last section you write because it provides a summary of each key section of your plan.

This section provides an introduction to your business plan with the aim of swiftly immersing and engaging the reader. Explain to them the type of poultry farming business you are operating and the status; for example, clarify how long you’ve been in business or if you already have an operating poultry business.

Then, provide a concise description of what the reader should be expecting in each of the subsequent sections of your plan. For example, give a brief overview of the farming industry.

Discuss the type of Poultry business you are operating. Share your major competitors. Give an overview of your target customers. Exhibit your marketing plan. Name and introduce your team. And break down your financial plan to digestible bits.

Company Analysis

Here in this section of your plan, you will detail the type of poultry business you are operating.

For example, you might be involved in wide varieties of lucrative opportunities or have just a particular niche of this niche that your business operates in.

Egg production (Layers breeding)
Meat production (Broilers breeding)
Chicken breeding (Hatchery)
Poultry feed production
Poultry equipment manufacturing etc.

Share the type of poultry business you operate which may be one of the above, a combination of them or something new. Also, in this section of your business plan needs to provide more background information on the business. That involves answering questions like;

What drove you to start the business?
What milestones have you achieved in your company’s past? These could include sales goals you’ve crested, previous contracts, etc.
Your legal structure. Explain your legal structure here. Are you incorporated as limited liability company or a sole proprietorship? Whatever it is, your reader needs to know.

Industry Analysis

It’s necessary in your poultry business plan for you to provide an overview of the business. it serves multiple purposes by not just educating you but assisting you to understand the market in which you are operating.

Market research can boost your strategy especially when your research identifies market trends. For example, if there was a trend towards chicken, it would be helpful to ensure your plan considers this trend and aligns your business accordingly.

Being thorough in this section proves to readers that you are an expert in your industry. By conducting the research and presenting it in your plan, you should achieve that with ease.

Try to answer these questions as best you can in this analysis section of your poultry business plan:

How big is the poultry business?
Who are the key competitors in the market?
Does the market increase or decrease?
Who are the key suppliers in the market?
What is the industry’s growth forecast over the next decade?
Finally, how big is the potential market for your poultry business? You can find this out by assessing the size of the market in the entire country and then applying that figure to your local population.

Customer analysis

This analysis section of your business plan must detail the customers you serve and/or expect to serve.

Poultry businesses generally serve a wide range of categories of customers so it’s important that you have defined what exactly you hope to provide for them

If you know your target customers demographic very well it will more than aid you in marketing. This way you can create customer segments for your business services, isolating different suitable atmospheres for a large range of customers.

As you can imagine, the customer segment(s) you choose will have a great impact on the way your poultry operates. Break out your intended customers in terms of their demographic and psychographic profiles.

Talk a little about the ages, genders, locations and income levels of your intended customers. Because most poultry businesses tend to serve customers living around the same city or locale, such demographic information is readily available on government websites.

These profiles and data studies explain the wants and needs of your target customers are. The more you can understand and define these needs, the better you will be at attracting and retaining your customers.

Competitive analysis

An analysis of your competition works to reveal to the reader that you know your niche or target market well. This means you need to identify your indirect and direct competitors and then focus on the latter.

Your direct competitors are the other poultry businesses whilst you Indirect competitors are the other options that customers have to purchase from that aren’t direct competitors.

This could include; pig farms, goat farms, sheep farms etc. You need to mention such competition to show you understand that not everyone who buys meat buys poultry meat.

For the direct competition, you should detail the other poultry businesss with which you compete. For local businesses, your direct competitors will be poultry businesses located in your same geographic location.

Provide an overview of the businesses of each of them and document their strengths and weaknesses. Know things about them such as:

The types of customers they supply.
The products they offer?
Their pricing (premium, low, etc.)
Their strong suits
Their weaknesses

Think about your answers to the last two questions from the customers’ perspective. Do not be afraid to call and speak with customers you know have used your competition regarding what they like most and least about them.

The last part of this analysis section is to document your areas of competitive advantage. Talk about:

What you will be doing that will be unique from the other businesses
What you will provide that your competitors don’t offer (e.g., selective packaging)
What will make it easier or faster for customers to purchase your services?
If you will provide better customer service
If you will offer better pricing

Reason up magnificent ways you will outperform your competition and document them in this section of your plan.

Marketing plan

In this section of your poultry plan, you have to describe to the reader how you aim to gain and retain customers. Rudimentarily, a marketing plan includes the four P’s: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. For a poultry business plan, your marketing plan should;

Product: Reiterate the type of poultry business that you documented in your Company Analysis. Then, detail the specific products or services you will be offering.
Price: Document the prices you will offer and how they compare to those your competitors. Essentially in the product and price sub-sections of your marketing plan, you are presenting the menu items you offer and their prices. Since these items might vary from client to client, include your core items in your plan.
Place: Document your location and mention how the location will impact your success. For example, is your poultry business located next to a heavily populated office building, or gym, etc. Discuss how your location might provide a steady stream of customers.
Promotion: Document how you will drive customers to your location(s). To promote your poultry business, you might consider, advertising in local print media, reaching out to local bloggers and websites, partnerships and sponsorships with local organizations, local radio advertising, maintaining a community presence by joining local networking groups and social dives, banner ads at local venues etc.

Finally, your marketing plan should talk about your brand and what you would like it to stand for.

Operations plan

Here in this section, you are to describe how you will meet your goals. Your operations plan should appropriately imply to the reader that you have a working route to achieve your goals, hence reassuring them more.

Operation plans usually possess these two distinct sections;

Long-term goals are the milestones you hope to achieve in the foreseeable future. You could include the dates when you expect to crest a particular financial threshold, or when you hope to reach $X in sales, or even when you expect to hire your Xth employee or launch a new location.

Everyday processes or short term tasks are all of the tasks involved in the day to day running your Poultry business such as farm maintenance, drawing up contracts, supplying the services and products, procuring supplies, etc.

Management plan

A strong management team is essential to demonstrate your poultry’s ability to succeed as a business. Highlight the experience and expertise of your key players, emphasizing those skills that prove their ability to grow a company.

You and/or your team members need to have had some direct experience in the poultry business, ideally. If so, highlight this experience but also highlight any experience you think will help your business succeed. If your team is inadequate, consider assembling an advisory board.

An advisory board includes 2 to 8 individuals who can act like mentors to your business. They would assist the business and provide strategic guidance. If needed, look for an advisory board member with experience in the poultry business or successfully running a similar enterprise.

Financial plan

This section will help you understand just how much funding you require to achieve your goal. The financial plan for your poultry business should include your 5-year financial statement. This includes your cash flow statements, income statement, and balance sheets.

Cash Flow Statement: To help determine how much money you need to start or grow your business, and make sure you never run out of money, you need a Cash Flow Statement. What most Poultry owners don’t realize is that you can turn a profit and still run out of money and go bankrupt.

For example, let’s say a company approached you with a massive $200,000 supply contract, that would cost you $100,000 to fulfill. Well, in most cases, you would have to pay that $100,000 now for packaging, transport, storage, etc. Say the company doesn’t pay you for 120 days. During that 120-day period, you could go broke.

Income Statement: (also commonly referred to as Profit and Loss statement or P&L.) shows your revenues and then subtracts your costs to show whether you turned a profit or not. You need to devise assumptions in developing your income statement.

For example, will you serve 7 clients per month or 18? Will sales grow by 3% or 12% per year? As you may have wondered, your choice of assumptions will greatly impact the financial forecasts for your business.

Do try to root your assumptions in reality, as best as you can.

Balance Sheet: A Balance sheet is a financial statement that exhibits your assets, liabilities, and shareholder equities at a specific point in time. In preparing your Balance Sheets and Income Statements, be sure to include several of the key costs needed in starting or growing a poultry business.

These could include; the location build-out including design fees, construction, etc., location operations expenses such as rent and utility bills, cost of equipment, Farm maintenance fees, payroll or salaries paid to staff, business insurance, Legal expenses, taxes and permits etc.

Appendix

This section exists so you can attach your full financial projections in the appendix of your plan along with any supporting documents that make your plan more attractive.

Summary

Getting a very well written business plan for your Poultry business is worth a lot. If you follow the guide above, by the time you are done, you will understand how to achieve this better.

You will come out of it really understanding the poultry business, your competition and your customers. With this, you should be able to put the pieces together to form your own business plan.

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