SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE AND FOOD PRODUCTION
Dates to powder (not instant) from second grade dates for food and dairy industries
Market
| Final Products | Date powder |
| Required Inputs | Second grade dates |
| Competing Products |
Low competition |
| Potential for Export | Medium |
Process
| Complexity – Type of Process | Medium – thermal processing (food safety controlled) |
| Technology | Extraction and spray drying (fluidized bed drying) |
| Equipment and Material | Extractor, filters, evaporators, mixers and dryers |
| Human Resources | Manual labor, machine operators, chemists and quality control engineers |
Business Linkage
| Forward Linkage | Bakeries, milk and juice factories |
| Local/Regional/Nationwide | Local Market- Upper Egypt Region |
| Backward Linkage | Farmers |
| Supporting Entities | Equipment and spare parts suppliers, food safety specialists and marketing companies |
| Competitive Edge |
Healthy alternative to sugar, as well as high availability of supply with low transportation costs |
Economic Features
| Revenue Stream | Sales of date powder |
| CAPEX | Consists of the cost of machinery which average around 1M EGP (assumption is producing 1000 tons per year) Note: This CAPEX represents the indicative investment size, however, this investment opportunity can start from a micro-scale investment and grow in scale. |
| Investment Size | Small (between 500k-5M EGP) |
Considerations
| Key Challenge | Absence of marketing services, meeting product specification and standardization, supply access and quality |
| Advantages | Cost-competitive organic ingredient to replace chemicals |
| Potential Pathways to Growth | Production, sales and/or distribution of date pit extracts (e.g., date seed oil for cosmetics), production of high protein feedstock for animal feed factories, production of value-added substrates to produce fermentation products – the end-products themselves and bioactive compounds – other products from by-products include date paste, date pits and pressed cake (could be feedstock for animal feed), date jam/spread, date flesh powder and date seed powder |
General Impact
| Environmental | Utilization of second grade dates |
| Social | Increases return on agriculture dates and creates job opportunities for unskilled labor and women |
Impact on Sub-market(s), Cluster(s) and Value Chain(s)
| Relevant sub-market | Intermediary to industries (food, pharmaceutical, wood and paper) |
| Lies within the following value chain/cluster(s) |
Dates, food processing and packaging |
| Impact | Promotes value-addition to date production |
Studies
| Serial | File name | Download |
| 1 | UNIDO IGGE_VC Cluster Competitiveness & BOM |
