Kenya Sugar Firm Banks On Technology for Market Takeover
Published on by Water Network Research, Official research team of The Water Network in Business
A new private sugar firm in Kenya is pioneering irrigation farming and mechanisation to turn a profit.
Kwale International Sugar Company Ltd (Kiscol) started operations three years ago, copying the successes of the countries exporting sugar to the region by adopting plantation and irrigation farming and mechanisation.
Last year, the firm's sugar yield was 74.86 per cent, crushing more than 290,000 tones of cane to produce 28,000 tonnes of sugar. This amounted to 14 per cent of the sugar produced in the country by its 12 factories, latest data from the Sugar Directorate shows.
"In three years, we now control 15 per cent of the market. As other millers are constantly depending on imports and processing to stay afloat, ours is a fresh-from-the-farm operation supported by zero imports. We don't even have a sugar import licence. In the next five years, we want to be among the top three players in this market," said Harshil Kotecha, the director of projects at Kiscol.
Model of farming
Its close to 5,500 acres of nucleus farms scattered across Kwale County, on the South Coast of Kenya, are dotted with drip irrigation pipes running into thousands of kilometres, ensuring a faster maturity and an all-year supply of cane.
"We have borrowed the sugarcane model of farming from Mauritius and invested in sustainable agriculture. This is the only way to do large-scale farming and it is high time that Kenyans understood that smallholder plots do not work for sugarcane," Kiscol agriculture operations manager Ravi Chandaran says as we tour the farms.
Kiscol is trying to mirror in the success of sugarcane farming in Mauritius, one of the largest exporters of sugar in Africa.
Irrigation enables Mauritius to produce more than 600,000 tonnes from its 62,000 hectares. Half the country's sugar is exported, bringing in 25 per cent of the export earnings.
"This is something that can be done. We have the same climate and soil composition as Mauritius and using technology and mechanisation we can achieve success by carefully managing the farms to feed the factory," explains Mr Chandaran, a Mauritian national.
Irrigated agriculture
The Kwale sugarcane firm, which boasts of Omnicare, the largest sugar producer in Mauritius, as one of its major shareholders, has invested in seven dams with a holding capacity of more than 20 million tonnes of water and an extra 30 boreholes, from which it pumps groundwater to irrigate its cane in the dry seasons, and whenever their dams are depleted.
These high-capacity dams can run the entire farm for more than six months without running dry. One of the seven dams has a capacity of 2.7 million cubic litres of water.
Kiscol uses the sub-surface drip irrigation systems installed by Amiran Kenya, in partnership with Netafim, an Israel firm that specialises in irrigation systems, to boost its cane production.
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Taxonomy
- Sustainable Agriculture
- Sugar Cane Crops
- Sustainable Agriculture