Goals

Problem statement:

The dried fruit business is quite profitable, but this business doesn’t have many customers in Georgia yet. This is because dried fruit made without a drier changes color, making it unpleasant to look at and difficult to sell.

Dried properly, research has shown that the profit gained from dried fruit exceeds the profit gained from fresh fruit realization by 52 percent.

In Lagodekhi conditions make is possible to produce dried persimmon, kaki, pear, plum, fig, apple, peach, and grapes, all grown locally. Currently, farmers are forced to sell these fruits at a low price because they cannot dry them.

The introduction of dried fruit production will be help these fruit farmers turn a profit. Dried fruit is also is healthy and can be stored for winter and spring. In addition, the fruit used is not saturated with fertilizes, making it particularly attractive to the foreign market.

Proposed Solution:

With funding, we will purchase the fruit drier Bio-508, which operates on solar energy. My family members and I have dried fruit production experience in domestic conditions. As for the drying device, the consultation about producing dried fruit with it will be provided to us by the firm which we will purchase the device from.

We will pick part of the fruit needed for the fruit production in our garden, and we will gather the rest from the nearby villages. We will wrap the ready-made products in sacks of different sizes (0,5 and 1 kg) and paper packages (100 and 200 g.). In order to get sacks we will buy natural cloth tissue, which is useful for wrapping all kinds of fruit. We will make sacks from the tissue with the help of family members.

On one side of the sacks and paper packages we will attach transparent, special plastic for visualization, labels with inscriptions about the fruit variety, its production date, the producer’s name, also the useful qualities of the fruit and the funder of the project. We will sell the packaged fruits in markets and supermarkets.

Sustainability:

The introduction of dried fruit production in Lagodekhi will be profitable for dried fruit producers and fruit farmers. The solar drying apparatus dries fruit in 1-3 days. The device productivity is 10 kg ready-made dried fruit, which is high quality. In one month one device can produce 300-500 kg dried fruit.

With funding, we will use the profit gained from the fruit realization to expand the business. We will paste explanations to different kinds of fruit saying what they are good for and we will arrange tastings. All this will contribute to popularizing the fruit produced by us and raising demand for it, which will serve as the guarantee for the sustainability of our work.

Equal gender opportunity:

Increased fruit sales will benefit male and female fruit farmers, and hopefully employ many men and women as demand increases.