Nahar Agro seeks to lead egg market with Tk150 crore new investment

Nahar Agro, a Chattogram-based agro farm, plans to make a Tk150 crore new investment to expand its poultry business to enter the egg market with around 10 lakh daily supply by 2025.

The new investment plan is expected to transform the farm, which is heavily concentrated on hatching egg production, into a major player in the egg market in the Chattogram region, company officials say.

"There is a daily demand for 50 lakh eggs in the Chattogram region, but there are not enough poultry farms in the area to meet the demand. We are planning to fill the gap in production to ease the crisis in the market while also reducing the price," Rakibur Rahman, managing director of the company, told The Business Standard.

Currently, the company produces nearly 2.5 lakh hatching eggs a day, apart from some consumable ones with double yolks. It also has businesses in areas ranging from poultry and fish feed to dairy and horticulture products.

The move comes at a time when Bangladesh is grappling with price volatility in the egg market, forcing it to allow imports from neighbouring India as a tool for stabilising the situation.

Initially, Nahar Agro aims to supply two lakh eggs per day by this year, which will eventually increase to 10 lakh by the next year, according to company officials.

With the massive business expansion plan, it hopes to create around 1,000 new jobs alongside producing 50-60 tonnes of environmentally friendly bio-fertiliser per day.

The company says it has already taken initiatives to import modern machinery and establish new farms in different parts of the district in phases.

In the first phase, the company plans to set up a shed to produce two lakh eggs per day by 2024. By the end of 2025, the company will set up all seven sheds containing 1.2 million hens to produce one million eggs.

"We hope to set up all the sheds in phases to produce 10 lakh eggs by 2025 and then we have plans to double the production in the next two years," Rakibur said.

The company aims to incorporate modern technologies in its egg production, such as an automatic system for brooding, egg collection, drinking, and feeding facilities, alongside installing an automatic ventilation system and automatic heating and cooling equipment in the new layer industry.

"There will also be an automatic litter collection system to turn the litter into biofertiliser. We are working on that, particularly to make our new industry more effective," Rakibur told TBS, adding that the industry will produce 50-60 tonnes of biofertiliser every day.

In a span of 37 years since starting business as a livestock venture in 1989, Nahar Agro has become one of the country's largest and most successful agro-business entities with an annual turnover of around Tk1,000 crore. It employs more than 2,500 people directly and another 10,000 indirectly.

The company has maintained a sustainable growth with top-quality day-old chicks, poultry and fish feed, along with dairy and horticulture products.

It has 12 lakh parent-stock (broiler and layer) chickens in its poultry farms. From the eggs laid by the parent-stock chickens, 22 lakh to 24 lakh chicks are produced every week in its hatcheries.

Besides, its dairy farm has 1,700 breeding and milking cows, producing about 5,500 to 6,000 litres of milk daily.

Nahar Agro operates four poultry and fish feed mills in Mirsharai, Sirajganj, and Jashore, with a production capacity of 60,000 tonnes per month. Currently, these mills produce 30,000 tonnes of feed a month, with 20% used by the company's own farms and the remaining 80% marketed.

Additionally, the agro company provides chicks, feed, and other technical support to around 10,000 poultry farmers across approximately 5,000 poultry farms nationwide.