Start Salt Business in Pakistan In Just 3 Easy Steps!!!

Starting any business successfully requires a great deal of planning, efforts and yet there is likelihood that you may fail, according to Small Business Administration (SBA) (1) over 50% of newly started small businesses fail in first five years and of those that make it, another 50% fail in the next few years.

So you can see starting business is a risky business yet there are businesses which can be quite successful in Pakistani context and salt manufacturing business is one of those businesses.

Salt has high demand in Pakistan and it is way too easy to start salt business in Pakistan because of way lower production costs, Pakistan has quite huge salt reserves with having second world largest salt mine in Khewra, also known as Mayo Salt Mine.

Mayo salt mine remains country largest salt source producing more than 350,000 tons per annum, to earn handsomely from this untapped resource all you need is cool packaging, better marketing using different channels like billboard, pamphlet, radio, tv advertising to convince your target market that your salt is not only of superior quality but is also comparatively cheap from rest of the market.

In this article you will learn:

1. How to start salt business in Pakistan, like initial investment like machinery required, cost of machinery and return on investment (ROI) etc
2. You will also learn about packaging cost, marketing cost
3. You will also learn about managing business from getting supplies to production, packaging to sale in market.
4. You will learn about different essential things that will be required to successfully run this business like human resource requirements, vehicle requirements so on and so forth.

Starting Salt Business in Pakistan in 3 Steps:

Running salt business is pretty easy, all you need is few machines and you are good to go, like I always advise to my readers, whenever you want to get into any business, want to start a specific business, spend at least 2-6 months in the same business by learning everything from A to Z.

This will not only help you getting a general, overall idea of how to effectively run that business but will also give you insight into essential aspects of that business which are necessary to run that business successfully, means you will not only learn tricks of the trade but the whole trade itself, it is really important especially if you have never run any kind of business before.

Now spending time in the same business means spending time with those people, experts who have been running this business successfully for at least a decade.

Okay now let’s get back to starting salt business from A to Z

Step One:

In step one you will need to do the following things

• First find salt suppliers, you need a truck load of salt at least, you can find different suppliers online, check this list, contact these guys if you need to or you can search for more.
• You will also need a clean manufacturing place where you can put all of your machinery, any industrial estate location with minimum rent will be sufficient or you can start from your home if you have large enough place.
• You will also need office furniture, computer, telephone connection; internet etc for your outlet office, your outlet office should be near around your manufacturing unit, so that you can keep an eye on everything.
• Plus you will also need something like wheel barrows, gloves and other tools to get salt to the machine via factory labor.
• Lastly you will also need packaging, for instance if you want to launch 200 gram sachet or jar or want to launch multiple varieties in terms of weight like 100 gram sachets, jars, 250 gram sachet, jars etc you will need to deal with jar, bottle suppliers to select jars for your packaging and for sachets you will need to work with designing and printing service providers to get the sachet packaging of your choice.
• You will also need to hire at least two guys to work in factory on machines etc
• You will also need carton packaging to pack your jars, sachets up.
• You will also need to set up prices for wholesale, for bulk, for retail etc, I would suggest to start with low pricing and high quality approach to capture market and later on increasing price to earn more.
• You will also need couple of guys to crush those huge salt rocks to small pebbles that can easily crushed in low end salt crushing machine.

Step Two:

• You will need to buy salt crushing machine to crush salt to fine powder/small grains, such a machine (low end machine) will cost you anywhere from 80 thousand Pkr to 10 lakh Pkr.

You can get the same from local dealers in Pakistan or via online from alibaba.com or you can even visit china to get one plus you will also get to see great china wall 😉.

·         For jar packaging before you put jars into jar packaging machine, you will need to put labels on it either with the help of a machine or by using a simple heat gun, a quality heat gun will cost you around 2500 Pakistani rupees.

Watch the following video how heat gun is used to put label on jars

• You will also need a packaging machine to pack that crushed salt in sachets or to fill jars as per requirement, such a machine (low end machine) will cost you between 50 thousand pkr to 5 lakh depending your requirements, needs.

Watch the following videos on how sachet packaging, jar filling machines works

Sachet filling and packaging:

Jar filling with salt and packaging:

So when you have packaged your salt in sachets, filled jars with it, it's time to move to the final step.

Step Three:

• You will need to feed stock manufactured data into computer on daily basis, so that you know how much you have manufactured on any given day, a quality accounting, stock, inventory record keeping software will help you in that.
• You will need sales guys to sale the manufactured stuff in the market, in early days of your business if you can’t afford market supply vehicles you can ask the sales guys to arrange bikes to not only take orders but to also do supplies the next day as per route plans, to develop sale route plans, hire experienced sales guys and if you can’t afford to hire experienced sales guys check this post how to hire experienced sales guys with low budget, because experienced sales guys will be the only guys to make sales for your new brand so your business, startup really needs them.
• You will need to put such a system in place to keep check on each sales guy daily, weekly monthly sales, product returns, credit etc again a quality accounting software is all what you need.
• You will also need to keep record of you key buyers like wholesalers, retailers so that you can build further relationships with them and to use those relationship for current and future products.
• You will also need to do marketing, I would suggest to start with pamphlet, brochure advertising as it is the most effective option available for low budget startups, 5 thousand quality pamphlets and 3 thousand quality brochures will cost you around 35 to 40 thousand Pakistani rupees. You can do pamphlet, brochure advertising via the sales guys you have hired.

Return on investment or ROI here varies between 25% to 50% per rupee, means when you invest one rupee in this business, you will earn 25 pisas to 50 pisas in profit.

That’s it, as you can see I have shared practical approach, no bookish theory, so if you want more similar stuff then check Super easy home based manufacturing business idea, you will definitely find that post quite interesting and way too easy in terms of practicality.

And if you want a well explained post on how to manage all affairs of a business because you are newbie to business thingy then check this post How to manage any business (from A to Z!)

Lastly don’t forget to subscribe to receive everything related to startups, small business, marketing with practical applicability right into your inbox.

Over to you guys, don’t forget to share!

Don’t forget to check! 30 Super Cool Business Ideas for Pakistan Entrepreneurs!

Finally I would really appreciate your thoughtful comments!

References:

1. U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Census Bureau, Business Dynamics Statistics; U.S. Dept. of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, BED