Agricultural Infrastructure Procurement Guide

Sector overview

Post-harvest losses of 20–40% are still typical in many geographies not because equipment is unavailable, but because infrastructure is procured piecemeal: silos here, a dryer there, a cold room later, trucks last. Treating the infrastructure layer as one bankable programme — sized to peak-week throughput and moisture curve — is what separates a project that unlocks the yield from one that constrains it.

Buyer decision framework

1. Crop portfolio and harvest curve

Fix crops, expected volumes and the harvest curve. Peak-week volume, not annual, sizes drying, storage and processing.

2. Moisture and quality pathway

Grains, oilseeds, pulses, roots, fruits, vegetables and horticultural produce all follow different moisture and temperature paths from field to buyer. Encode this path as the RFQ reference.

3. Buyer specification

Downstream buyer specifications (moisture %, purity, size grade, defect tolerance, certifications) determine what "processing" must include. Confirm before RFQ.

4. Logistics envelope

Road, rail, port and cold-chain adjacency drive whether storage is centralised, satellite or hub-and-spoke. Model logistics OPEX alongside infrastructure CAPEX.

Technical specification checklist

• Peak-week volume, moisture-in, moisture-out and storage residence time
• Reception: hoppers, weighbridges, sampling, quality lab
• Drying: continuous / batch, capacity, fuel, energy efficiency
• Cleaning, grading, dehulling, sorting to buyer specification
• Storage: silos, flat stores, controlled atmosphere, capacity
• Aeration, fumigation and pest management
• Cold-chain: pre-cooling, chilled and frozen storage, blast freezing
• Packing: bulk, bagging, IBC, MAP, palletising
• Loading: bulk, containers, refrigerated trucks
• Utilities: energy, water, wastewater, fuel storage
• Automation, SCADA and traceability from field to buyer
• Guarantees: throughput, moisture accuracy, energy per tonne, availability

RFQ structure

Bundle the infrastructure layer into three packages: (a) civil works, (b) mechanical and process equipment, (c) automation and cold-chain. Provide one integrated mass-and-energy balance as the reference. Suppliers should re-verify but not re-scope it; scope changes are what cause the classic 30–50% cost overruns in this sector.

Supplier evaluation criteria

• Integrated design across storage, processing and cold-chain — 25%
• Guaranteed peak-week throughput and quality — 20%
• TCO across 10 years including energy — 20%
• Track record on comparable crop and scale — 15%
• Schedule and construction risk — 10%
• Financing structure and payment terms — 10%

Financing pathways

Post-harvest infrastructure attracts strong development-bank and food-security funding (World Bank, IFC, IDB, ADB, AfDB, IsDB, FAO, GAFSP), commercial agri-debt and ECA-backed equipment finance from European, Turkish, Chinese and Brazilian suppliers. See our agriculture-finance, cold-chain finance and infrastructure finance pillars.

Common risks & mitigations

• Piecemeal procurement — commit to one integrated package with mass-and-energy balance
• Undersized peak-week capacity — spec for peak, not average
• Cold-chain last-mile gap — model refrigerated logistics as part of the infrastructure
• Weak commissioning — tie final payment to a peak-week performance test
• Currency and ECA exposure — align debt currency with revenue currency
• Weak traceability — insist on field-to-buyer traceability from day one

Frequently asked questions