2T/H Feed Crumbler Equipment in Nigeria

Why a Single Unit? The Customer’s Logic Was Simple

This customer didn’t want a new production line. His existing setup was:

• A 3-ton horizontal mixer worked fine
• A 2.5 t/h ring die pellet mill Chinese brand, but reliable
• A counterflow cooler basic but functional
• An old 7.5kW hammer mill the problem

The hammer mill was originally bought for grinding maize. But he tried to use it for two jobs – grinding grain in the morning, crumbling pellets in the afternoon. That never works well. The hammer mill’s screen clearance and rotor speed are wrong for crumbling. You end up with either too many fines or oversized chunks that haven’t broken properly.

He looked at buying a full crumbling section – feeder, crumbler, sifter, return auger. But that would have meant re-doing his control panel, adding a second bucket elevator, and hiring another guy to run it. Too expensive and too complicated for a mill his size.

So he asked: Can the crumbler be mounted directly under my cooler discharge, without a separate feeder?

Yes, if the crumbler has an integrated feed mechanism. The SSLG series has a simple roll feeder built into the inlet. The material falls by gravity from the cooler into the crumbler. As long as the upstream discharge is controlled – he had a slide gate – it works fine. No extra motor, no variable speed drive.

That’s the whole point of buying feed crumbler equipment in Nigeria as a single unit. You don’t pay for features you don’t need. You just fix the broken part of your line.

What He’s Processing: Local Ingredients and Pellet Specifications

Nigeria’s feed industry runs on a mix of local and imported materials. This customer’s broiler starter formula looked something like:

• Maize local: 55-60%. Nigerian maize can be variable – sometimes 12% moisture, sometimes 15% if it’s the rainy season. Higher moisture pellets are softer and harder to crumble cleanly.
• Soybean meal imported from Argentina or local from Oyo state processors: 25-30%
• Groundnut cake local, cheaper alternative: up to 10% when soybean meal prices spike
• Fish meal imported from Mauritania or Senegal: 2-3%
• Premix, limestone, dicalcium phosphate: the rest

He was pelleting at 5mm diameter, 2.8 compression ratio die. That’s a bit higher compression than usual for broiler starters, but he liked the pellet durability. The pellets were hard – good for transport, but harder to crumble.

After cooling target temperature 40°C, but in Ibadan’s climate, sometimes the cooler couldn’t get below 45°C, the pellets went into a holding bin with about 20 minutes of residence time. That cooling and resting period is critical. If you feed warm pellets into a crumbler, they’re too elastic. They squish instead of shearing into clean crumbles.

The SSLG15x80 Installation: What It Looked Like

The installation wasn’t complicated, but there were a few real-world details worth mentioning.

First, the height. His cooler discharge was about 1.8 meters above the floor. The crumbler needed to sit on a small platform to align with the next piece of equipment – a bucket elevator that lifted the crumbles to a screener. We sent him a simple drawing showing the recommended inlet height and discharge angle. His local fabricator welded up a stand from 4-inch channel iron in two days. Cost him about 150,000 naira roughly $100 at the time. Nothing fancy.

Second, the connection between the cooler and the crumbler. The cooler had a 500mm square outlet. The crumbler’s inlet is 800mm wide. That mismatch meant he needed an adapter chute. We could have sold him a stainless steel adapter, but shipping from China would have been expensive. Instead, we sent him a template drawing, and his welder built one from 2mm mild steel sheet. He lined it with 2mm UHMW plastic to reduce friction and prevent bridging. That plastic liner cost him maybe another 50,000 naira. Worked perfectly.

Third, the electrical connection. The crumbler runs on a 4kW, 380V/50Hz motor standard Nigerian industrial voltage. He had an extra slot in his control panel from an old conveyor he removed. His electrician wired it in – start/stop, thermal overload protection. No VFD needed because the crumbler doesn’t require variable speed for this application. Fixed speed works fine if the roll gap is adjusted correctly.

Total installation time: four days, including building the stand and adapter chute. Actual machine placement took about four hours.

Performance Data: Before and After

The customer kept records – not perfect, but good enough to see the difference. Here’s what he shared with us after three months of running.

With the feed hammer mill baseline:

• Throughput: 1.8 t/h he had to run the hammer mill slower to reduce fines, which hurt capacity
• Fines material passing through a 1mm screen: 28-32%
• Oversized material staying on a 3.5mm screen, needing re-crumbling: 15-18%
• Acceptable crumbles 1mm to 3.5mm: roughly 55%
• Motor load: 7.5 kW running near full load
• Noise level: painfully loud he didn’t measure, but said workers complained

With the SSLG15x80 crumbler after tuning:

• Throughput: 2.2 t/h continuous limited by the feed pellet mill, not the crumbler
• Fines less than 1mm: 9-12%
• Oversized greater than 3.5mm: 10-12%
• Acceptable crumbles: 76-80%
• Motor load: 3.5-3.8 kW
• Noise level: noticeably lower – he said his operators no longer needed earplugs

The fines reduction from ~30% down to ~10% was the big win. That’s 200kg less waste per hour. At local feed prices about 350 naira per kg for broiler starter at the time, that’s 70,000 naira per hour of wasted material that he got back. Of course, he wasn’t running 24 hours, but even at 6 hours per day, the math worked fast.

A Few Problems That Came Up Because Real Projects Never Go Perfectly

Let me be honest – the first week wasn’t smooth.

Problem 1: The roll gap drifted. He set the gap at 1.8mm on day one. By day three, the gap had opened to about 2.3mm because the adjustment handwheel vibrated loose. The crumbles were getting too big. We reminded him embarrassed that we forgot to mention it earlier to use the lock nut on the adjustment mechanism. He tightened it, marked the position with paint, and checked it every morning for the next week. After that, it stayed stable.

Problem 2: Magnetic protection saved him. On day five, the crumbler made a grinding noise and stopped. He opened the inspection door and found a small piece of metal – looked like a broken bolt from the cooler chain – stuck between the rolls. The magnetic plate in the inlet had caught it, but somehow a piece got through. The rolls had a small nick but still worked. Without that magnet, that bolt could have damaged the roll corrugations badly. He added a second magnet strip just to be safe.

Problem 3: Belt tension. The V-belts stretched a bit after the first 50 hours of running, which is normal. He didn’t check them. The belts started slipping under load, and the crumbler slowed down. Once he re-tensioned them took ten minutes with a wrench, it was fine. Now he checks belt tension every two weeks.

None of these were major failures. They were normal commissioning hiccups. But they’re the kind of details you don’t see in glossy brochures.

Why He Chose RICHI Over Other Options

He had three alternatives:

1. A used European crumbler Italian brand offered by a dealer in Lagos. Price was similar to ours, but the machine was 12 years old. No spare rolls available locally. If the rolls wore out, he’d have to import from Europe – expensive and slow.
2. A cheaper Chinese crumbler from a trader who didn’t have a local agent. The price was 30% lower, but the trader couldn’t tell him the roll material hardness. He asked for a hardness test report – never got one.
3. A locally fabricated copy. Someone in Ibadan offered to build one for half our price. But the fabricator was using mild steel for the rolls, not Ni-Hard alloy. The rolls would have lasted maybe 200 tons before needing replacement.

He chose RICHI Machinery because we provided:

• A hardness test report for the roll material 60-65 HRC for the wear layer
• A video of the same model running a test with 5mm pellets not generic footage
• A list of other customers in West Africa using similar machines – he called a mill in Ghana and talked to the production manager for 15 minutes

That reference call sealed it. The guy in Ghana told him: Buy it. But buy spare belts and one set of bearing housings. You’ll thank me. He did.

Shipping and Logistics: Qingdao to Lagos Apapa Port

The machine was shipped from our Qingdao factory in a 20-foot container. We loaded:

• The SSLG15x80 crumbler main unit
• One pair of spare rolls he ordered these – smart move
• Two sets of V-belts
• Four bearing housings just in case
• A small toolbox with the specialized wrench for roll adjustment

The vessel went to Apapa Port in Lagos. That’s the main port for Nigeria’s imports. Shipping time was 35 days from Qingdao to Apapa, plus another 10 days for customs clearance and port delivery. Apapa is known for congestion, but this shipment moved reasonably fast because we used a clearing agent that specializes in agricultural machinery. The customer arranged his own trucking from Apapa to Ibadan – about a 2-hour drive, but with Lagos traffic, it took a full day.

One tip: we labeled the container clearly as ONE UNIT FEED CRUMBLER – AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY – NO COMMERCIAL VALUATION FOR RE-SALE. That helped his agent avoid being charged the higher tariff rate for industrial processing equipment.

What This Customer Learned And What You Should Know

After six months of running, he shared a few observations that I think are useful for anyone looking at feed crumbler equipment in Nigeria or anywhere else.

First: Don’t skip the sifter. He initially thought he could run the crumbler without a screener and just bag the crumbles directly. That didn’t work. The crumbler produces some fines 9-12% in his case and some oversized pieces. He ended up buying a simple two-deck vibrating screener from a local supplier – 1mm bottom deck, 3.5mm top deck. The oversized goes back into the crumbler he rigged a small bucket elevator, and the fines go back into the mixer for re-pelleting. That screener cost him about $1,200 but paid for itself in two months.

Second: Keep the rolls from touching when empty. He forgot this once. He closed the roll gap all the way with no material running, then started the machine. The rolls ran metal-to-metal for a few seconds before he realized it. That dulled a small section of the corrugations. Now he has a simple rule: never adjust the gap tighter than 0.5mm when the machine is off.

Third: Log your roll life. He started tracking how many tons he processes between roll changes. After 600 tons, the corrugations are still sharp. He expects to get at least 1,500 tons before needing to reverse the rolls they’re reversible – you can flip them to use the other edge. That’s better than the 800 tons he was told to expect from the cheaper competitor.

Customer Feedback Direct Quote from a WhatsApp Message

I’ll write it exactly as he sent it, cleaned up slightly for clarity:

Brother, this machine is good. Before, my starter feed was too dusty. My customers were complaining. Now, the crumbles are clean. One customer even increased his order by 20% because his chicks are eating better. The only thing I regret is not buying the spare rolls earlier. I waited two months after installation to order them, and shipping took another month. If I had ordered them with the machine, I would have saved that time. But the machine itself? No problem. It runs every day, sometimes 10 hours straight. The bearings are still cool. I will buy another one for my grower line next year.

That’s the kind of feedback that matters. He didn’t talk about advanced technology or innovative design. He talked about customers increasing orders, chicks eating better, and bearings staying cool.

Is a Single Feed Crumbler Right for Your Operation

Here’s my take, based on this project and others like it.

A single feed crumbler equipment in Nigeria makes sense if:

• You already have a shrimp feed pellet mill and cooler that work well
• Your bottleneck is crumble quality, not overall capacity
• You don’t want to re-engineer your whole line
• You have basic fabrication skills locally or a welder you can call

It does NOT make sense if:

• You’re starting from scratch with no existing equipment
• You need a fully automated line with centralized control
• Your pellet quality is poor soft pellets won’t crumble well no matter what machine you use

For this customer, the single-unit approach worked because he had a clear problem, a limited budget, and realistic expectations. He didn’t ask the machine to do things it couldn’t do. He just wanted to replace a hammer mill that was the wrong tool for the job.

Final Thoughts and How to Reach Us

If you’re in a similar situation – you have a shrimp feed production line, you need crumbles, but you don’t want to buy a whole new section – get in touch. Send us your pellet diameter, your target crumble size, your hourly tonnage, and a photo of your current setup from the cooler discharge down to the next conveyor. We’ve done enough of these retrofits to tell you pretty quickly what will work and what won’t.

And if you’re in Nigeria or anywhere in West Africa, we can connect you with this customer or others who are running the same feed crumbler equipment in Nigeria. Sometimes hearing it from another mill operator is worth more than any spec sheet.

You can reach our team through the website or directly via the contact information on this page. Tell us what you’re running now, and we’ll tell you if a single crumbler is the right fix.