Copra For Cash!

Copra Price, Updated Daily

Here in the Philippines the buying and reselling of copra is a pretty good business.

As the semi-truthful Wikipedia states: "Copra ... is the dried, white flesh of the coconut from which coconut oil is extracted. Traditionally, the coconuts are sun-dried, especially for export, before the oil, also known as copra oil, is pressed out."  Since it rains nearly every day here, we dry our copra in a big cinder block building I refer to as the "copra cooker".

Our copra business profited about $5,000 USD last year, and this year if we get lucky we'll double that.

So what do you need to become a copra tycoon?

You're gonna need capital, lots and lots and lots of capital.  You're gonna need much more filthy lucre than you ever imagined.  Why?  Because the Gods of copra have a snarky sense of humor: you will go for days without anyone selling you copra, then suddenly one day everyone and their crazy uncle Fred will be selling you multiple sacks of copra, and you will be scrambling like a one armed wallpaper hanger trying to find some extra cash.  (Quick aside: when we lived in Macon, GA, we knew an actual one armed wallpaper hanger.  Believe it or not, he was a good worker, and a good guy.)  When you buy copra, you pay for it in cash.  

Unless you are rolling in wealth, you will probably need a way to access a line of credit for those times when you run out of money.  Here in the Philippines, we have found the easiest way to access money is to buy gold jewelry on our American credit cards, then pawn this jewelry for Philippine Pesos.  Yes, the fees are exorbitant!  This isn't the cheapest way to get cash, just the easiest.  But once we pay off pawn load, my wife has some new jewelry!

The other thing you are gonna need is a reliable truck.  We own a Suzuki Carry, which is a fantastic vehicle.  It has been in three wrecks so far, (with its dents and duct-tape "fixes" it looks like a true Filipino farm truck!), but is still running strong.  However, if I had it to do all over again, I'd buy the Isuzu Elf.  The Elf is a little bigger, which would make our loads of copra to the wholesaler bigger and more profitable, and the nearest Suzuki dealer in Ozamiz is kinda cruddy, although they have been getting better recently.  Conversely the nearest Isuzu dealer is one of the best auto dealerships I have ever dealt with.

Unless you have a large family of able bodied young adults, you'll need workers to pick up the sacks of copra, (which are heavy!), and watch the copra while you dry it in the cooker for a day or so.  (Bone dry copra fetches a higher price.)  If you also purchase tibuok, (unshelled coconuts), you'll need someone to crack open the coconuts and scrape out the copra, which is a lot more work.  Fortunately labor is readily available here in the Philippines, although the quality of this labor is highly variable.

You'll need a place to store the copra.  The building behind the sign in the picture at the top of the article is ours; copra is stored in the room behind the sign to the right.  (The room to the left is my wife's agricultural feed store, which another good business here.)

There are probably some other minor expenses I've forgotten, but running a business here in the Philippines is nothing like running a business in the USA, where tax goons and regulators of every flavor are forever sticking their greedy noses in your business, trying to discover if there is yet another way they can extort some money out of you.

Finally, I would HIGHLY recommend that anything you do here in the Philippines is done where you or your spouse has family, or at a bare minimum a group of people you can trust.  Personal relationships are vitally important here if you want to succeed at any venture.  As a cautionary tale, there is a recent YouTube channel chronicling the trials and tribulations of a young lady who moved to Siquijor and tried to build a house there.  Although she is a Filipina herself, she was unable to find the help and support she needed to build her dream, so finally after disappointment after disappointment she is abandoning her project, selling her land, and moving on.