NRI Endorses Cassava Drying Technology

The Natural Resources Institute (NRI), University of Greenwich, United Kingdom ( UK) has highlighted the pioneering effort of Nobex Tech, an indigenous Nigerian Company.

This, the institute said would set the standard for quality and after sales services of cassava drying equipment in Africa.

This was disclosed in a statement issued by the organisation recently and obtained by THISDAY.

The institute, which said it first came in contact with firm in 2006, while exploring home-grown solutions to address post-harvest losses in cassava, under the ‘ Cassava: Adding

Value for Africa (CAVA) and CAVA2’ projects that lasted till 2019 and supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

According to the statement: “Striving to expand and develop processing capacity for SMEs, a key issue of availability of quality equipment and after sales service was identified and this led NRI to approach ‘Nobex Technical Company Limited’ a Nigerian manufacturer that has specialised in equipment for drying and roasting cassava.

“One of the machines that Nobex fabricates is a ‘flash dryer’, so called because it dries agricultural products almost instantaneously. Once harvested, the crop needs to be processed quickly, for fresh cassava roots begin to deteriorate 72 hours after harvest,” the institute explained in a recent release.

Specialists from the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB) led by the Country Manager of CAVA Nigeria, Prof. Lateef Sanni, and a food processing specialist from NRI, Dr Andrew Graffham, as part of a FUNAAB-NRI collaboration, encountered a Nobex flash dryer at a factory in Akure, Ondo State.

This led to collaboration between the Managing Director, Nobex Tech, Mr. Idowu Adeoya, his team of engineers and NRI agricultural engineering specialist, Dr Andrew Marchant, to produce an improved machine that significantly lowered production costs.

Some of its notable specification showed fuel usage decreased from 374 to 65 litres per tonnes of dried product; output increased from approximately 100kg an hour to around 330kg an hour of dried product, while efficiency moved from 11 to 55 per cent.

“Building on CAVA2’s experience and progress with Nobex in Nigeria, a complementary initiative is taking shape in Ghana, with the development of a new, fuel-efficient flash dryer on a smaller scale,” NRI announced.