Product Information
. To be able to produce vegetables the Napali people need a place to grow these vegetables while not taking away land. A solution would be the the GrowIT Round Raised Bed Greenhouse (RRBG), a product made by Shelter Logic Canada located in Brampton Ontario (Shelter Logic Canada, 2015). The Round raised bed greenhouse is a rib frame 4ft by 4ft by 2ft made out of steel. The steel frame is coated in DuPont Premium Powder coat finish, which resists chipping and corrosion of the steel. The frame is covered in a translucent polyethylene cover made up of two side panels and a retractable top cover (Shelter Logic Canada, 2015). This frame attaches to any base structure of the same length and width and height of more then 4 inches. Since the Round raised bed greenhouse is just a cover structure the base portion of the greenhouse is not included in the package. This means the Napali’s could create their own base structure to support the shelter if they wished to create a more permanent structure. A base can be made out of any material that will hold dirt and could just be a frame that sits on the ground. The other option would be to purchase a premade tray or base. A company in St. Albert, Alberta manufactures a heavy-duty polyethylene containment basin, which is the same length, by width by a height of 1.5 ft as the Round raised bed greenhouse. This basin would be the best fit for using as the base of the Round raised bed greenhouse, due to its chemical, rust, ultraviolet light and cold weather stress resistance (Zeebest Plastics, 2015). Zeebest Plastics is a company that manufactures oil spill trays and basins that are used for the storage of petroleum products and are a safeguard to the environment.
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GrowIT Round Raised Bed Greenhouse. (2015). Retrieved November 30, 2015, from http://www.shelterlogic.ca/Greenhouses/70617
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Transportation
To ship the Grow it round raised bed greenhouse to Nepal there are several steps involved. The polyethylene plastic trays are manufactured at Zeebest Plastics as they are a fully functional manufacturing plant able to create many different products(Zeebest Plastics, 2015). The shelters made of polyethylene plastic are made by the Shelter Logic manufacturing plant in Watertown, Connecticut, United States of America (Shelter Logic, 2015). The first stage of transportation is transporting the Grow it round raised bed greenhouse from Connecticut, United States of America to a warehouse in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The trays are to be shipped by truck to the same warehouse in Toronto from St. Albert, Alberta, Canada. Both products are then packaged together in skids of 50 of each product to be shipped from Toronto International Airport to Kathmandu Nepal by cargo plane. This type of transportation is most efficient and the quickest way to ship a product to Nepal. The other option for shipping the product is to have a warehouse located in Nepal. The trays would then be shipped from Alberta to Nepal and the shelter would be shipped from Connecticut to Nepal directly. The warehouse in Nepal would then distribute the product parts together to local agricultural supply stores or any store willing to sell the product as this product is intended to be used by everyone or anyone who wishes to be able to grow their own vegetables. The cost of shipping 100 units by cargo plane is approximately $1,772.00 Canadian (A1 Freight Forwarding, 2015) from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The cost of shipping 100 trays by cargo plane to Nepal is approximately $1,042.00 Canadian (A1 Freight Forwarding, 2015) from Calgary, Alberta, Canada and it costs approximately $951.00 to ship 100 shelters from Shelter Logic in Watertown, Connecticut, United States of America to Kathmandu, Nepal (A1 Freight Forwarding, 2015). This is about the same cost as shipping from Toronto, Canada but would be cheaper overall because of reduced trucking costs, which is approximately $2000 to ship from each plant to Toronto (Transport Canada, 2006). Once in the agricultural stores such as the Himalayan Agrovate Company the distributor can then sell the product either by sales directly from the store or doing door-to-door sales. The door-to-door sales would be more beneficial when selling to those in the mountain region of Nepal.
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Cost
For the Grow it round raised bed greenhouse product to be used in Nepal it needs to be manufactured and exported. Both the tray and shelter part of the product is manufactured in Canada. The Grow It shelter is manufactured in Brampton Ontario by Shelter Logic Canada and costs $66.99 Canadian (Shelter Logic Canada, 2015), which is approximately 5 342 Napalese Rupees based on one Canadian dollar being approximately 79.74 Rupee’s (The Money Convertor, 2015). The tray manufactured by Zeebest Plastics in St. Albert, Albert costs $166.00 per unit (Zeebest Plastics, 2015), which approximates to 13 237 napalese rupee’s (The Money Convertor, 2015). The total cost of a package would then be $233.00 Canadian and 18 579 napalese rupee’s. For a developing country such as Nepal where the average Nepal farmer makes around 1 490 rupee’s approximately $18 Canadian (IFAD, N.D) a month this product is not easily afforded by one individual. This product is a product that one would invest in, as its return is not immediate profit wise. However one or two units can be purchased by a community and used collectively to produce vegetables for the whole community. Thus it is less expensive for an individual. Another way to decrease the expense of a unit is to only buy the shelter portion of the package and then use materials such as scrap wood or clay to create a base to attach to the shelter. This makes the product less portable but more affordable per unit. The community can then build up the number of units they buy thus being able to produce more produce.
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