Rural regions consume a significant share of the maize meal in Africa, since it’s a staple food. But with unstable maize prices and high transport costs, rural maize meal prices are increasing.

This is a concerning trend, but it can be addressed: by reducing input costs, consumer prices can be kept down. Community milling helps by bringing the mill to the community to keep costs for the end-user as low as possible. 

Community or service millers charge members of the local community a small fee for milling their maize, often the staple food of rural families. These millers provide an important service to people in rural areas, who cannot afford to travel great distances to have their maize milled or to purchase commercially packaged maize meal from retail shops.

It’s a win-win situation for both the entrepreneur and the community he serves. Take Lesotho’s Godfrey Kou, Jerry Ntsekhe and Mahala Molapo as example. They are all making a valuable contribution to ensuring food security in their local communities whilst building profitable businesses as well. Their success stories are an inspiration to fellow entrepreneurs.

Localised maize milling a.k.a. community milling is a rapidly growing market sector. Some of the reasons it creates real business opportunities for African entrepreneurs include:

• Maize meal as a staple food will always be in demand in Africa
• Population growth means consumption growth
• Maize meal is needed for people, while its by-product can be fed to livestock
• Scalability is crucial for African distribution
• Choosing the right mill means low operating costs, from day one of operation

Roff designed its innovative Posho Mill to help entrepreneurs start out in community milling.

Once an entrepreneur has decided to pursue community milling, one of the biggest decisions will be in which mill to invest – especially in a start-up operation.

To serve this specific market, Roff designed its innovative, easy to operate Posho Roller Mill to deliver quality maize meal at a capacity of 750kg per hour, using a small footprint and with optional extras available.

The Posho is a hardworking maize mill with simplified roller milling technology designed for rural productivity. Its real beauty, however, lies in the fact that its lower operating costs can be passed on to the community.

- It delivers a quality end-product
- It delivers a valuable by-product
- It’s compact with large production value
- It creates profitable opportunities
- It enables the miller to save on transport costs
- Its easy operation makes growth easier
- Low energy, high output

With Roff’s Posho Mill, the most advanced, small-scale maize milling machine currently on the market, entrepreneurs can build a successful business AND serve their community.