Product Policy
Building a snail farm
The snail business basically involves three different, but related
activities, that depend on each other:
Raising, processing and selling the snails, in that order.
That is, there would be three cost centres for the same
purpose.
- Firstly, the snail farm will be designed and built according to the predicted sale volumes.
- Secondly: the snail processing will not be expensive, but it
does have a high labour cost.
- Thirdly, the cost of selling and distributing snails.
We presume that the export revenue will be divided in three parts. If we decide to outsource the two final stages we will be getting a small
part of the selling price, which might not even cover the farming
costs.
Before starting up a snail farm, we have to decide if we are going to do it on
our own or if we will outsource some parts. We must know the exact cost of the snail processing, and the price the processing company would pay for our
snail products. When we know this, we can calculate the projected investment and profits.
Building a snail farm can be done with creativity and a “bit” of money,
but a snail processing plant has to follow the rules and policies of state
and sanitary authorities, requiring a lot of money and a bit of creativity.
You can choose to build installations to produce 1000 to 2000
kilograms a month. If increased production is necessary, then further
investment is required.
Getting 10 snail producers involved in a cooperative would
be a great solution. It would lobby the authorities for specific legislation
to improve the efficiency of the farms.
Buyers require a certain volume of snails at regular intervals.
But, do all buyers demand the same quantity? The answer can be found
through market research.
The cooperative would share processing, selling and distribution costs
between its members, improving profit margins for all.
Snail farms
For raising snails there are at least two types of snail farms. Open panels are the
oldest; they date back from Roman times, when they developed the production of
snails in open, fresh and sunny places like the walls of their houses.
Nowadays, this mechanism has been intensely modified into walls of 18 to 21 feet
tall with irrigation through aspersion, halls and shelters, with complementary plants
for their nutrition.
Other type of farms use closed panels that require the adaptation of a hermetic
place as a barn, which is conditioned with temperature and
humidity equipment.
This type of snail farm is the most preferred by professional snail farmers to ensure
the security and wellbeing of snails, which are fragile creatures that like to crawl
over different surfaces, therefore they get hard to find by the human eye.
