Danish firm pitches for EAC countries

KIGALI, Rwanda - CIMBRIA, a Danish agri-business processing firm is making in-roads in East Africa.

“We want to extend our services to Burundi and Congo and this will be so with collaboration with the government,” Peter Wanjohi the Technical Sales Assistant at CIMBRIA East Africa Ltd said recently.

“We provide post-harvest machinery for handling grains such as maize, beans, rice, coffee among others,” Wanjohi said.

CIMBRIA is based in Denmark which makes the East African section a subsidiary company with main offices in Nairobi Kenya.

“We have conveying machines, drying machines, seed processing, electronic sorting, storage and turnkey machines,” Wanjohi said in an interview with East African Business Week during the recent Agri-show of Rwanda.

Wanjohi said in Rwanda, they have partnered with the government under the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources.

“We have been able to start up two plants; one based in Nyagatare and the other at the Ministry,” Wanjohi said.

The plant at the Ministry was started back in 2012 and the one in Nyagatare was started in 2011 but still under construction. It may open by the end of the year.

Wanjohi said such plants help farmers reduce on post-harvest losses which are mainly due to poor drying up of grains, cleaning them among others.

Each plant costs over Rwf3 billion. Like any other company CIMBRIA faces challenges in the country which involve lack of enough farmers to deal with. Farmer set up is still at small scale and therefore no individual farmer can buy such machines.

“We again face a challenge of poor communications where you find that explaining to farmers about our products is hard and therefore this makes doing business not easy for us,” Wanjohi said.

He said however if the private sector of the country comes up and does business with them then the post-harvest challenges most farmers in the country will be dealt with hence help them develop just like other countries the company operates from.

“Again government needs to come up with an agricultural project that can help farmers deal with grains which will improve on productivity,” he said.

CIMBRIA does not only deal in construction of grain plants but also provides support services which may include training farmers on how to use the machines, plus some technical advice.

The company has over 40 employees from East Africa with hope to get more if fully established in Rwanda.

Wanjohi said the MINAGRI plant has storage capacity of over 20,000 tonnes of maize, drying up to 15 tonnes per hour and the Nyagatare plant has storage capacity of over 10,000 tonnes of maize.

CIMBRIA Denmark started their long relationship with East Africa back in 1972 for the then Wheat Board of Kenya with delivery and installation of wheat dryer, cleaner and conveyor, installing another plant in Bungoma still in Kenya but later made 3 more installations in Tanzania.The company has so far made further installation for crops such as maize, wheat, coffee, rice, and beans among others across the east African region.

When the second plant in Rwanda starts operating the country will be able to store food for its entire population.

By Agnes Bateta, Saturday, June 21st, 2014


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