Utete, TZ – Group reviews one year in egg business! – 29 Aug 2014

Most new businesses go through an investment period until they break even, and the Bates Banda chicken group has been going through this during their first year of operation.

This month the group made a full review of its finances. This has been the group’s first full year of running the project since they took delivery of 107 baby chicks, and none of them had experience with a project like this before. There have been a number of valuable learning experiences since their initial training helped prepare them.

Over the past eight months the chickens have been laying eggs, and the group has earned total revenues of 2,642,000 TZS (US$1,650), by selling crates of 30 eggs for 8,000 TZS (US$5.00)  per crate.  That amounts to nearly 10,000 eggs sold this year!

The group has also recorded expenses of 2,274,000 TZS (US$1,420) and loan repayments of 342,000 TZS ($214). While the margins and total profits are not good for the year, the team is confident that the learning from this year will help avoid costly problems next year, which should increase revenues and decrease expenses.

All four men in the project have school aged children and their goals for the project are all related to helping those children get a better education.