Mango drying systems in Burkina Faso
What the crop demands, what the country imposes, and what that means for capacity.
Orodara and the Kénédougou province around it are the centre of West African dried mango, and the sector is unusual in being built on drying rather than fresh export. Dozens of small units already operate there. Most run on LPG trucked from Abidjan or Lomé, priced on a world market and delivered on fragile logistics.
The situation in Burkina Faso
Landlocked, so every tonne of finished product travels by road to Abidjan, Lomé or Tema before it reaches a ship. That single fact shapes the whole processing case: fresh fruit cannot make the journey, dried fruit can, and the margin sits with whoever removes the water before the truck leaves. Grid supply outside the two main cities is intermittent enough that a drying plan built around electric heat is a drying plan built around a generator.
Growing regions. Cascades, Hauts-Bassins and Comoé — Orodara, Banfora and Bobo-Dioulasso
What mango drying demands
Mango is the crop that makes the case for controlled drying on its own. It arrives in a six-week wall of fruit, prices collapse exactly when volume peaks, and a large share of the crop is never picked up at all. Dried at 65–70 °C to 12–14 % moisture it becomes a twelve-month product with an export market that already exists.
Harvest calendar
March to late June. Amélie opens the season in March, Lippens and Springfels follow in April, Kent and Brooks carry May, and Keitt closes it in late June. The peak glut, when fruit is effectively unsellable fresh, falls in May.
The working campaign window as the trade runs it. It shifts a fortnight either way with the rains.
Process parameters
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Drying temperature | 65–70 °C |
| Final moisture | 12–14 % |
| Yield (fresh : dried) | 10 : 1 |
| Cycle time | 16–20 h |
Sizing starting points from ordinary processing practice, not a validated recipe for your product. Confirm against your own intake and your buyer’s specification.
Worked sizing example
For a unit taking 4.5 tonnes of fresh product a day, at a yield of 10 : 1:
Illustrative figures calculated from the yield and campaign window above. They size a conversation; they do not describe any existing installation.
Fuel available in Burkina Faso
Burkina combines cashew shell (Cascades, Hauts-Bassins), abundant cotton stalk after the cotton campaign, and shea cake. Mango peel supplements during the mango campaign itself.
- Base load. Cashew shell · Cotton stalk · Shea cake and shell
- Supplement. Corn cob · Groundnut shell · Sesame stalk · Dried mango peel
See all 27 fuels and their properties
Market and buyer requirements
Europe, and specifically the organic and fair-trade dried fruit chains in France, Germany and Switzerland that already source from Burkina. Buyers specify 12–14 % moisture, water activity below 0.65, and increasingly want sulphite-free product with documented pesticide compliance.
Explore further
The systems that hold this profile
Other crops in Burkina Faso
Shea · Raw cashew nut · Tomato · Onion · Sesame
Mango drying elsewhere
🇨🇮 Côte d'Ivoire · 🇲🇱 Mali · 🇬🇭 Ghana · 🇸🇳 Senegal · 🇬🇳 Guinea
Frequently asked questions
How much fresh mango does a Burkina unit need per tonne of dried?
About ten tonnes of whole fresh fruit at intake, before peeling and stoning, at roughly 85 % process yield. A 4.5 t/day intake therefore produces close to 450 kg of dried mango per day, or 45 to 55 tonnes across a hundred-day Orodara campaign.
Can a mango dryer in Burkina run on something other than LPG?
Yes, and that is usually the point of replacing it. Cotton stalk is abundant across the Hauts-Bassins after the cotton campaign at around 3,900 kcal/kg, cashew shell is available in the Cascades at 4,800 kcal/kg, and dried mango peel from the line itself briquettes at 4,200 kcal/kg.
How long does the Burkina mango campaign actually last?
A hundred to a hundred and twenty days if the varietal sequence is run in full, from Amélie in March through to Keitt in late June. A unit set up for a single variety works about 40 days. That gap is why off-season crops belong in the sizing conversation from the start.
Size a unit in Burkina Faso
Tell us your daily fresh volume and target output, and we will size the chambers, the burner and the fuel available around your site.
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