Money From Boiled Corn

While many corn farmers around the world are lamenting the low price of corn which sees them almost just breaking even in their profits there are enterprising people who are making money from the logistics of corn.

The Indian Market

If you visit the Indian website IndiaMart.com for example you will see that they are already making full use of the corn plant itself. They sell the corn, the husk, the cob as human or animal feed and so on. They sell them whole, in pieces or in powdered form. There is a huge variety and number in the ways corn products are sold in India.

What however piqued my interest is the fact that they also sell boiled corn packaged in vacuumed plastics and they can sell them in bulk plus they deliver. This is the first time I saw large scale distribution of boiled corn. To satisfy my curiosity if there are other businesses from different countries who are doing the same I checked online and here are some results:...

A Check of Some Countries

I found that in the United States, Philippines, Thailand, United Kingdom, Korea and Mexico there are corn suppliers but in raw form. This means that they sell corn in their original form that is not yet ready to be eaten. In Australia I was able to find one supplier who sell boiled corn but they are not pre-boiled. You have to submit your order first before they would boil the corn.

It seems that only the country of India has suppliers of ready made boiled corn. One interesting fact is that India actually imports corn despite being one of the largest producer of corn. This means Indians have a large appetite for corn and it is understandable that there is a big demand for such products as ready made boiled corn.

In fact all the countries I have mentioned all export and import corn. All Corns are characterised as either Field Corn or Food Corn. The easy answer to the differences between the two is that food corn is primarily grown for human consumption while field corn is not.

This is due to the fact that field corn has a blander taste and not easily eaten as compared to food corn. Field corn however is also suitable for human consumption and depending on your culinary skills can be as delicious as food corn. People also can just boil field corn and it is ready to be eaten.

This means that it is safe for anyone to sell boiled corn by using any corn variety. Since corn is also a commodity and all you need to cook boiled corn is boiled water then if you can bring down your costs so much like the wholesale boiling of corn which saves you water and energy costs primarily you can compete based on price and sell them cheap to your customers.

This as repeatedly stated is already happening in a big scale in India. If you Google “online boiled corn India” you will see a lot of sellers of pre-boiled corn. Checking again using the previously mentioned search term in all the countries I previously checked shows a slightly different result.

Again all the countries I searched still have no pre-boiled corn products available in their online markets except for Korea which shows one company selling boiled corn online. The company name is Wang Korea. They sell boiled corn to the Korean market and as I have found internationally as well thru Asian Online food e-commerce markets...

The Korean Connection

I was able to trace one of their pre-boiled corn products being sold to the Mercato food e-commerce website that serves the American market. Here is the proof: Wang Korea Boiled Sweet Corn - 16 Ounces. I was also able to trace their product in an another asian food e-commerce site that serves the country of Ireland.

This simple product is being sold internationally by a Korean company and if there is international demand and market from such countries as the USA and Ireland then there is good money to be made from it especially if your market is not only local but global. Who knows which other countries they export to.

As these companies grow their international market other businesses from other countries do not even serve their local countries even on an online basis. There could be a future scenario where the international online market for boiled corn would have been dominated by a few international players at the expense of the local businesses and customers.

Boiled Corn Is Ideal for Long Term Storage

Boiled corn can last for three (3) days out in the open and ten (10) months or more when frozen. This means that they are ideal for long term storage and their taste is locked in when they are frozen. A wholesaler of boiled corn can cook them in one go and store them for a long time. This means they are safe to be transported for long distances and even exported out of the country.

The Old Ways

What I however see are boiled corn vendors in the Philippines and India lugging away their heavy street cart filled with gallons of boiling water and sacks of uncooked corn. They can even get scalded by the boiling water if they are not careful. Though I think that there are those that pre-boil the corn before hawking them using their street cart.

If we are to modernise this then we would do away with the corn vendors boiling the corn themselves and just ordering it from these people who mass boil corn. They can even get these mass corn boilers to deliver it to them wherever they are selling the boiled corn without having to carry the heavy boiled corn in the first place.

I have not found out online of any specific businesses doing this. Maybe there are already enterprising people who are doing this because they have figured out the logistics of boiled corn.

Conclusion

As can be seen just like almost all products these days boiled corn is already being marketed online and is even available on an international basis. For example Alibaba the Chinese e-commerce giant also lists several suppliers who sell wholesale boiled corn. The big players have entered the market and what remains is for the smaller players to market it direct to consumers.