High-quality processing tomatoes produced by well-trained farmers supply a new factory that will strengthen Nigeria’s vegetable value chain.

Tomato Jos, a fully integrated farming and processing agribusiness in Northern Nigeria that produces tomato paste and other agricultural products for the domestic market, commissioned a new tomato processing factory on 24 September 2021 in Kaduna, a city about 190 km from the capital city of Abuja.

Caleb Olanipekun, Research Assistant in Agronomy, represented the World Vegetable Center at the launch. WorldVeg partners with Tomato Jos on on-station and on-farm trials of improved processing tomato varieties as part of a project funded by UK aid.

Around 40% of harvested tomatoes go to waste in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. Due to inefficient cross-country transport systems and a lack of storage facilities, local farmers can neither store their tomato crop nor distribute it at scale. Despite being Africa’s second-largest tomato producer, Nigeria still relies on importing around half of tomatoes consumed locally.

Established in 2014, Tomato Jos is striving to change that situation. The company works with smallholder farmers to increase yield, reduce losses after harvest, and get optimum returns from sales. According to an article published in Techcabal in May 2020, the company has directly supported over 70 farmers in increasing their average yield by over 340%, from 5 to 22 metric tons per hectare, while increasing average income as much as 455%.

The new facility has the capacity to process 1 carton of tomato paste sachets per minute, with the paste having at least 34% brix (a measure of the sugar content). It is the third-largest tomato processing plant in Nigeria.

Outfitted with state-of-the-art equipment obtained from Italy, the factory has about 1000 sqm of indoor production space and 1,500 sqm of warehouse and office space. The cold storage room can accommodate up to 1200 barrels of tomato concentrate at a temperature under -10 degrees C.

“Processing has always been the plan for Tomato Jos, but to get there, we spent a long five years working only on farming and primary production to make sure that we had a really solid foundation in place,” said Mira Mehta, founder and CEO of Tomato Jos.

WorldVeg is delighted to have contributed to Tomato Jos’ effort to develop a strong tomato value chain in Nigeria to benefit farmers, consumers and the local economy.

UK aid
Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office