Summary

In August 2007 Solar Food Processing was started in Kabul at the premises of Afghan Bedmoschk Renewable Energy Center e.V.

Two people are employed to conduct tests regarding production, packaging and marketing of different local food items. The necessary set–up was provided. First focus was on marmalades, dried fruit and cakes. Later in the year pickles will be included.

It was proven that the implemented technologies, Scheffler Reflectors and Solar Tunnel Driers are adequate and the climate is favourable for solar applications. First market studies show that all the produced solar food items can be sold in Kabul. Regarding dried fruits a decentralised production in the villages that grows the fruit will be more profitable. For production of afghan style cakes more training is required. Production of Marmalades is the most promising field. Our Market study has shown high demand. The main problem at the moment is to find a reliable supplier of glass jars.

Long term aim is that the project will lead into a profitable small company standing on its own feet.

Site preparation:

An existing store room was modified into a workshop for food processing. For that purpose the room was emptied, the walls were plastered, to keep flies out the windows got equipped with mosquito mesh, the door got a fly-curtain. The room got equipped with four working tables and a shelf.  Outside the workshop an area of approximately 4x 10 m was concreted to accommodate the solar driers.

Some concreting was done around the newly installed baking oven and a wall and roof was provided for the stove used with a 10m² Scheffler Reflector.

Different tools like scales, pots, plastic for packaging etc had to be bought.

Two people are employed to test and produce different solar food.

Din Mohammad (left) is an experienced solar cook. He worked for Afghan Renewable Energy Centre LTD. for one year cooking for the staff with a 10m² Scheffler Reflector. A young man, Romal, is employed half time to help him.

The missing facility at the SFP workshop is a sink and water connection. To wash the utensils a common dishwashing place on the compound has to be used. Basic cleanliness is lacking at that shared facility, it is a hole in the ground filled with pebbles and a 200ltr water barrel besides it.

Technologies

Six solar tunnels driers of 2m x 1m are installed just outside the SFP workshop. Two of them may also be used by the staff of Afghan Renewable Energy Centre LTD (production of small wind turbines on the same compound) to dry fruit and vegetable for their private use. This arrangement will help us to gain experience with different dried items locally used. The results are documented by our staff. In case those two driers are under-used they get filled by the SFP unit, too.

The solar driers are a small version of the Hohenheimer Tunnel Drier. They work like solar air collectors. A computer fan is driven by a 5W solar panel (as sold by Afghan Renewable Energy Centre LTD for use with solar lanterns) to force the hot and moist air out of the drier.

More information about the small tunnel driers can be found at http://www.solare-bruecke.org/Bauanleitungen/Tunneltrockner_dt.pdf

Two Scheffler Reflectors of 10m² each are installed on the compound. For general information about Scheffler Reflectors: www.solare-bruecke.org
One reflector is heating a baking oven. The capacity of the oven lies between 5 and 9 kg per hour. More information about the oven is found at: www.hc-solar.de/Bakery_argentina_cm03.pdf
The other reflector is delivering energy for a stove. This stove is integrated into a simple kitchen set-up: a tin roof provides shade and a wall from three sides allows a comfortable working height, of the ground.

Solar Food

In Kabul commonly sold marmalades come from Pakistan or Iran.
When we buy  fruit in its very season it is relatively cheap even at the market in Kabul. We did not buy in bulk form the central fruit market. In case of increased production that will be a cheaper solution. For now the fair would have come too expensive.

We made excellent apricot and plum jam. The plums are of a special variety – Alu Bochara- that is traditionally much liked. Later in the year apple and carrots will be used.

At the moment a jar of marmalade of 350gr that is sold for 30Afs (similar price as the imported marmalades of about 200gr) costs us between 13 and 16Afs in ingredients and packaging.

Deducting weekends and non-sunshine days we estimate to be able to make marmalades on about 20 days per month. With a production of about 50 jars per day this would sum up to about 1000 jars a month.

All the jars and lids get sterilized by steaming them in a big cooking pot, using a 10m² Scheffler reflector. We were not able to find gelling/preserving sugar (“Gelierzucker”) locally. More investigation needs to be done. For this reason the fruit has to be boiled for quite a while to reduce its water content and to get a good texture. To reach the planned production capacity of 50 jars per day we will install one further 10m²reflector.

Designing a label for the jars and getting it printed proved to be very time intensive. For that reason we didn’t elaborate it too much. It was important to establish the contact with the printing company and get some samples to start with. We got 250 pieces of each label printed.

Our main problem was and is finding a source of new glass jars with twist off lids. New ones were not available. Second hand jars are sold in Kabul, but they are extremely dirty, a lot of time is consumed scrubbing them and sterilizing them. The worst: most of the lids are damaged. It is impossible to guarantee that the marmalade won’t spoil over short time. We had to use these jars for our tests. But we then only filled about 200 jars, because of uncertain durability.

We tried to get jars from Jalalabad and even from Pakistan. One obstacle was the small quantity of one thousand jars that we wanted to buy to start with. Secondly the timing was bad: due to the month of Ramasan there was a high demand of jars and most companies had reserved their share.

We hope to solve this problem soon, someone has gone to Pakistan to search further.

Traditionally in Afghanistan fruit and vegetables are preserved through drying. Usually the cut fruit/vegetable is laid out on the flat roof tops. The climate is very dry and sunshine is intense. Therefore drying is fast.  The drawback is that the dust in the air (also sandstorms) settles on the foodstuff and often clay from the roof it self sticks to the fruit, too. Birds and insects have direct access.

Our idea is to produce higher quality dried foods by using  solar dryers.

We found out that using the dryers we can not speed up the drying process – an effect seen only in more humid climate. But we definitely get a cleaner end product.

As it was apricot time we mainly dried those. Fruit and vegetables are sold in the traditional unit “Ser” which comes up to 7kg. In Afghanistan usually things are dried until they are bone dry. The advantage is that the product will not spoil due to its low moisture content and no instrument to measure moisture content is needed. It means that we have to dry our products to the lowest weight possible. Packing volume is small. People would not buy dried items that have a soft appearance.

Some results of our tests:

The air in Kabul is very polluted. This means that drying times would be slightly less in rural areas with clean air (higher radiation levels).

The aim is to sell the dried items in supermarkets where we might be able to get a better price because of good quality. Supermarkets are not too common and only better-of people shop there.

Economically it does not seem to make much sense to produce dried fruit in Kabul. Especially if the fruit is not bought in bulk. We spent 100AFs on 7kg of apricots from a ordinary retailer. A man from the province of Ghazni, who dries his own apricots on the roof top and sells them, told us that 1kg of his dried apricots sells (according to its quality) for 25 to 40 AFs.

The highest price dried apricots in Kabul are sold to the end customer for about 300AFs for one kg.

For us two economic solutions are possible:
-         largely increase our number of driers in Kabul, buy the fruit in bulk and sell the end product to end customers ourselves or export it.
-         install driers in rural areas with the farmers themselves. Help them to sell their higher quality product at a better price. 

 The second possibility is favourable because it would bring an economic improvement for villages and farmers and lead to a decentralized creation of value.

At the moment the cost for the small driers is very high – it would not seem a reasonable investment for a farmer, even if he gets a better price for his product.  If we install the driers in villages we might increase their size and use cheaper materials. This needs to be researched.

We made various tests baking cakes in the oven powered by our Scheffler Reflector.  The oven is providing adequate temperature. Afghani cakes are sort of dry and spongy. A kg is sold for 40 to 50 Afs at the market. This leaves little room for fancy ingredients. The recipes have to be calculated within a tight economic margin.

Our only problem was to get the recipe right for the usual afghan cake. We inquired with professional bakeries, but they gave incorrect information – as we found out later. Also we had different brands of baking powder which have different rising capacity – this added to the confusion.
We tried to sell cakes with one shopkeeper, but he told us after 2 weeks that he would like to discontinue because the texture of the cakes was not the way he wanted it.
Our staff was very busy making jams, drying fruit and organising the hole new set-up. So we did not manage until now to get the afghan cakes ready for sale.
One idea is to sell european style cakes to hotels, so we made some fruitcakes with good results. But we did not try to find any hotel-customers yet.

Apart from making cakes with our own staff two other strategies are possible:
-         employ a baker to use the oven to its capacity and to sell the cakes
-         rent the oven to a baker

Outlook

We want to see the SFP unit to become a self reliable company after this initial phase of technology transfer and testing. One goal behind our effort is that the workshop can soon survive economically on its own. The range of items produced will also include pickles, testing needs to be done on that. At the same time we are striving to guarantee that the devices for SFP are being manufactured in Afghanistan. Our partners for manufacturing are Afghan Renewable Energy Center LTd and ETC. It is our aim to spread SFP into rural areas, too. The  first way to do this can be implementing solar dryers for farmers.