Delete the TAM. Write the Capex Band. Then Stop.

A working scenario — not a client case. 

Frozen potato export. A New Cairo boardroom. A batch file that does not match the floor.

The air conditioning in New Cairo hums the way it always does when a file is about to be called “investor ready.” The pack is thick. The slides are clean. 

Somewhere near the front sits the sentence every feasibility file learns to say: the market is large, the category is growing, the window is now.

Down the road, in a plant that actually has to freeze, bag, and ship potatoes, the blast freezer does not read that sentence. It reads occupancy, dwell time, and whether Thursday’s batch will still be a batch when it reaches the port.

If those two rooms cannot agree, do not add another market chapter. 

Delete the TAM. Write the number the plant can live with. Then stop.

The file in the boardroom

In this scenario the file is a frozen-potato export pack. Destination is written. Pack format is written. 

A weekly batch size is typed as if the line had already agreed. 

Capex sits in a tidy table: line, cold rooms, racks, a blast cell, a stretch of working capital that looks responsible on a screen.

What the file does not hold is a name next to Thursday, the hour the freezer is already booked, or the difference between the batch on paper and the batch the floor can release without lying to the buyer. 

That gap is the study. Calling it “strategic” does not close it. It only makes it harder to see.

What the floor would have said

Walk the same numbers onto the floor and the conversation changes shape. The batch in the file assumes a clean changeover and an empty freezer. The floor knows the cell is still holding last night’s run. The file assumes cartons leave the day they are packed. The floor knows a missed cut-off turns finished goods into rent.

Export does not forgive a polite average. Shelf life is a clock. Cold air is a bill. A missed slot at the port is not a slide in the risk chapter. 

It is product that can no longer travel as promised.

None of that requires a market-size exhibit. It requires one honest page: what we promised the buyer, whose name sits on the date, what the line can actually release this week, and what happens if the freezer is full.

Why TAM is the decoration

TAM is useful when you are choosing a country. It is decoration when you are choosing a blast freezer.

A large addressable market does not cool a pallet. 

• It does not buy an extra hour of dwell. 
• It does not tell you whether the batch file should be cut before the line is bought. 

In many SME packs across Egypt and the wider MEA, TAM becomes the chapter that lets everyone stay comfortable: the number is big, therefore the capex feels smaller than it is.

That is how a file grows: another competitor map, another growth curve, another sentence about demand. 

• The batch stays the same. 
• The owner box stays empty. 

Delete the TAM chapter until the floor can carry the batch. 

If the plant cannot protect the date at the volume on the page, market size is not the question.

The numbers that belong on one page

Write four things. Not forty.

The promise. 

What the buyer actually pays for: grade, pack, temperature, arrival window. Not the catalogue story.

The owner. 

One name on the date the first container is supposed to leave. A department is not an owner. “Operations” is not an owner.

The constraint. 

Name the thing that will break first — freezer hours, glaze water, carton supply, truck cut-off, letter of credit, inspection slot. 

If you cannot name it, you do not have a study. You have a wish.

The capex band. Not a decorated total. 

A band the plant can defend: the line, the cold rooms, the working capital that sits in the freezer while the documents move. 

Write the low and the high on paper. If a line item cannot be pointed at on the floor, it does not belong in the band yet.

Empty box means do not send the date. 

Hope is not a commitment, and a TAM slide is not a substitute for an owner.

Write it on paper. Then stop.

Screens invite decoration. Paper does not. Once the capex band is on a single sheet, two things become visible.

First, whether the batch file still matches the floor. If the weekly volume on the sheet needs a second blast cell that is not in the band, the file is lying. Cut the batch or raise the band. Do not average the two and call it sensitivity.

Second, whether anyone in the New Cairo room will put a name under the date. If the owner box stays blank after the number is written, the study is not ready for a bank, a partner, or a purchase order. It is ready for another meeting.

Then stop. Do not add a market novel to rescue a weak band. Do not stretch the horizon so the payback looks kind. Do not rename the leftover volume “strategic.” The kindness is the stop. A short file that can walk from the boardroom to the freezer is worth more than a long file that can only walk between laptops.

Keep, hold, or stop the capex. Those are the only three calls.

A hold without a number that can force a stop is a keep in costume.

If the file is live

A live file is not a pack that looks finished. A live file is one that is about to spend: a deposit on a line, a cold-room contract, a first export booking. That is the moment the band has to be honest.

If that is where you are, do not send a forty-page draft for comment. 

• WhatsApp the capex band. 
• One page. Promise, owner, constraint, low and high. 

If the batch on the page cannot be packed without decorating the freezer hours, say so in the same message.

We will tell you whether the file is operating or whether it is still furniture for the New Cairo table. No theatre. 

No TAM chapter as a substitute for a date.

WhatsApp the capex band: +20 10 1733 6400

Say the plant, the pack, and whether a date has already left the room. 

If the date has left and the owner box is empty, hold the date before you hold the meeting.

Hani Amin A. Afifi

Founder & Managing Director, Ur-Serv LLC

feasibility-studies.com  ·  ur-serv.com

Process first. Software second. 

Protect the date — or do not promise it.

A working scenario. Not a client case. 

No market-size figure was used because the floor does not cash TAM.