My formula of making money from sunflower - grow, process and sell

Gwa Kung’u, a dusty market centre located off the Nyahururu-Nyeri Road in Nyandarua County, is just a stone throw away from the equator, making it a potential tourist centre.

The smell of roast meat wafts in the air as I venture into the centre. Goat meat roasting is a popular business here, drawing in hundreds particularly at the weekend, some from as far as Nyeri, 89km away.

It is in this centre that Gideon Maina, a farmer, has located his Ndeka Virgin Sunflower Cooking Oil business.

Maina processes his own cooking oil from sunflower that he grows on three acres and also buys the produce from farmers that he has contracted. 

Sunflower grows well in areas with sparse rainfall, and the soil should be slightly acidic with a pH of between 6.0 and 7.5.

Several varieties, which include Sunbeam, Mammoth, Autumn Beauty, Teddy Bear and Kenya Fedha, are grown in different parts of the country, in particular western and sections of Nyanza. They mature in three to four months. Maina plants the last variety.

One needs at least an acre for a commercial venture, mono-ammonium phosphate or di-ammonium phosphate fertiliser or farmyard manure and certified seeds, which are readily available at agrovets.

To plant, the soil must be tilled to a fine tilth. Narrow furrows are then made and the seeds planted. Alternatively, one can broadcast the seeds and later thin out weak ones.

After the initial weeding, the sunflower outgrows the weeds, especially if they are crowded, and further weeding is not required.

“You must synchronise the sowing with the rain season so that as the crop matures, there will be little rainfall to end up with good produce,” says Maina.

HYGIENIC PROCESS

To know whether the plant is ready for harvesting, the head turns brown at the back. This happens about 30 to 45 days after bloom. At this time, seed moisture is about 35 per cent.

The head is cut from the plant about 4 inches below the flower and then the seeds removed. This can be done manually or using a machine. The seeds are then dried until the moisture content is below one percent.

Maina buys the sunflower seeds from farmers at Sh30 per kilo. The seeds must be properly dried, and cleaned thoroughly before milling.

He mills the seeds in a machine that also removes the husks. The milled seeds, now a thick paste, are then put in an oil extractor, which does the final extraction, letting the oil seep through taps.

A black paste like residue remains but Maina does not have the technical expertise to turn it into polish, wax or paint. His milling machine is capable of processing 600kg of seeds a day, to give him 120 litres of the vegetable oil.

“It takes 10kg of the seeds to produce two litres of the pure oil. I ensure that I have up to 100 litres of milled oil at any time in my shop, but when demand rises, I hire six workers to process more,” says Maina. “I add no chemical in the oil, the reason I have christened it virgin.”

He retails his products in five packages. Half a litre – the smallest – goes for Sh125; a litre at Sh250; two litres at Sh500 and five litres at Sh1,250.

He also sells sunflower cake, which is a byproduct that is a treasured animal feed, at Sh40 a kilo to livestock farmers.

Kenya Bureau of Standards regularly inspects his product that has a shelf-life of one year, and it has given him their mark of quality.

The product, which he has branded Ndeka Virgin Sunflower Cooking Oil, has gained popularity in Nyandarua, bringing in cash for Maina, who has now fully concentrated on the business that supports his family, including educating his two daughters in college.

On a good day, Maina sells about 150 litres of the cooking oil, with many of his customers coming to his shop due to referrals. However, the sales drop  sometimes to five litres a day.

“I have used the oil and I liked it. In fact I stopped buying the others from big factories because they are the same and Maina’s is fairly priced,” says Phyllis Njambi, a wife and a mother living in Nyandarua.

While making the oil, the farmer says he observes high standard of hygiene at all stages of production in compliance with public health guidelines.

EXTRACTING OIL

“I neither smoke nor drink. The extra people that I hire don’t smoke anywhere near my premise and all of us wear dust coats and masks when milling the sunflower seeds,” says Maina, who has registered his business with the County Government of Nyandarua.

Looking back, Maina has not had a so-smooth ride, but his journey has been punctuated with moments of triumphs that have kept him going. 

In search of more sunflower, the farmer started an out-growers’ scheme through which he was giving farmers sunflower seeds to grow and sell to him. “Previously, I relied only on seeds from my three acres but birds became a menace as they were eating them. Distributing the seeds to about 10 farmers, I believed that I would spread the risk and then buy from them sustainably at Sh30 a kilo.”

But this was never to be. Big buyers from Nairobi descended Gwa Kung’u with trucks and the local farmers sold their produce to them.

He turned to buying the seeds from farmers from as far as a Busia and Kitale, before he revived the scheme. Currently, he still buys the seeds from the regions at Sh30 a kilo when he has a shortage, competing with manufacturers who offer farmers an average of Sh28 a kilo.

The farmer says he learnt the trade from a company he was working for in Nairobi.

“Straight after secondary school, I joined Shanti Perfumery Works in Nairobi where I worked for several years.”

It is here that he learnt the art of extracting oils from seeds.

“But I left this job in 2003, ran a food outlet in Eastleigh, Nairobi for one year before returning home, where I opened a photo studio,” recounts the 52-year-old, who also keeps five dairy cows and grows vegetables.

And like any other good entrepreneur, he sniffed the death of his photography business in 2010 due to proliferation of digital cameras and smart phones.

It is soon after that he began crushing sunflower seeds to extract oil for home use. To start his commercial venture, however, he sold three cows he then had at Sh40,000 each to raise capital that he used to purchase a secondhand milling machine and set shop at the market centre.

“I would crush the seeds and sieve the crude oil with clean pieces of cloth. At most I would only make four to six litres a day. It was labour intensive and the slow process denied me business,” says the farmer, whose top challenge is sustaining his flower production and expanding his market.

In 2013, Maina decided to go fully commercial and borrowed Sh450,000 from a local bank. With the capital, he acquired a Chinese-made refining machine.

“My sunflower oil production changed from a mere four to six litres a day to 60 litres per hour when the machine is processing to capacity,” says Maina, who in the next five years hopes to turn his oil extraction and animal feeds business into a small industry with a good market in Nyandarua, and beyond, employing at least 25 to 30 people permanently.

His top advice to anyone seeking to engage in value addition of food products is that they must get all the necessary licences, including those from health authorities and bureau of standards.

HIGH-VALUE PRODUCT

“This will save you time that you may spend running away from authorities instead of nurturing your agribusiness,” says the businessman, who also extracts oil from kanola seeds.

Margaret Gitau, the agribusiness officer with The Subukia Forum, a community based organisation in Nakuru County, says sunflower oil is a high value product and its demand is rising because people are moving away from cooking fat.

She notes that competition is tough in the business due to the high number of many established processors, thus, small entrepreneurs must make quality products to get consumers’ attention.

“Such products can well be marketed in agricultural shows and trade fairs. Another way to get leverage is by the farmer diversifying his produce. You can mix the sunflower cake with hay, maize germ and make a complete dairy meal,” she says, adding that the same sunflower cake can be mixed with hay and molasses to make silage.

To ensure steady supply of seeds, Margaret notes, any one engaging in sunflower production should embrace contract farming. However, for good results, one should deal with farmers group not individuals.