Duo finds link to quick cash in car tyre chicken wire

Charles Muhoro has literally found a fortune in a heap of waste: he is earning by making chain link or chicken wire from old car tyres.

A case of thinking outside the box, he settled on starting a poultry farm but had no cash to buy the much-needed chicken wire for containing the birds in a cage. A friend advised him to try the steel wires from used tyres, hardly in short supply.

He had no hope of continuing his studies after sitting his Form Four examinations in 2008. His struggles to pay fees during the four years of secondary school education warned him that moving further to start tertiary education would be turbulent.

However, he was burning with the ambition of becoming a nurse.

“I had attained a C+(plus) and wanted to pursue my favourite career of becoming a nurse. However, I knew the financial status of my parents too well and this prompted me to start thinking of a way to get money,” says Mr Muhuro.

After days of hard thinking and forming mental images of the next course of action, he settled on starting “a simple project” of rearing indigenous chickens on a piece of land his parents offered him.

He had Sh3,000 that one of his teachers gave him as a good-performance gift for his Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination, the 26-year-old recalls.

“This was the only capital I had and with the high cost of chain link at the shops, I had to come up with an alternative way.”

Mr Muhoro bought rejected timber from a saw mill next to his home in Kericho Village, Nyeri County.

He built what could hold 200 birds. But turning into a coop was a source of headache because wood, which was the dominant piece of advice, would easily rot.

Making his own chain link kept playing on his mind but he had no idea how to make the first step until his younger brother, Robert Mwangi, 21, appeared on the scene.

Steel wires from old tyres would do and that is how they formed a partnership since removing the wires would be time-consuming and labour-intensive.

The two started searching for the old tyres and were able to make a chain link. After three days, they made a 100-metre long chain link, which was five feet high.

They started the business with 150 indigenous chickens and “everyone who visited our project kept asking where we got the chain link,” says Mr Mwangi.

The visitors also wanted their own wire mesh and ordered.

The duo has now embarked on making rolls of chain link from the extracts and makes more than Sh60,000 in a month. A roll goes for Sh8,000.
But they are also making 2m by one metre gabion boxes from the car tyre wires, which they sell at Sh4,500 per roll.

The chain link can stay for more than 10 years, the estimate.

Mr Mwangi says “the big challenge” is getting materials and they have to travel long distances to get them.

The duo buys one ring of old tyre at Sh30 but getting them is difficult since they compete with scrap metal dealers.

“We normally get ours from people who make tyre sandals. These people don’t use the wires and, therefore, sell the already cut tyre rings to us at Sh30 per ring,” he says.

SMEs forum

The chain link business is more lucrative, they say, and have asked their parents to take care of the poultry farm.

To net more customers, they have expanded to Chaka trading centre on the Nyeri-Nanyuki highway, where they have employed two people.

Last week, they participated in the Nyeri County Small and Medium Enterprises Forum, where they displayed their artwork and skills.

The county government of Nyeri, through the Deputy Governor, Samuel Wamathai pledged to support such innovations noting that they have set aside close to Sh10 million for such ventures.

Employ more

The money will be used to hire expertise who will train the innovators on how to improve their artwork as well as on where to sell their products.

“If we can get a good support on where to sell our products, we will be in a position to employ more youth as well as open more branches,” notes Muhuro.