Twiga Foods and a cloud services provider have been granted two months to try and resolve a Sh39 million dispute out of court.
High Court judge Josephine Mong’are gave the agri-tech firm and Incentro Africa 60 days to negotiate and agree on the settlement of the dispute.
The judge said if the parties will not have come to an amicable solution by November 30, the court will give directions on the hearing of the liquidation application filed by Incentro Africa.
“Parties are hereby encouraged to negotiate and come up with a settlement plan,” the judge said.
The judge further extended an interim order, blocking plans to liquidate Twiga Foods, a firm owned by billionaire Peter Njonjo.
The distributor of farm produce has disputed the debt after it was served with a demand for $261,878, which was subsequently lodged in court on September 4.
According to the agritech firm, the liquidation demand was made in bad faith in a bid to compel it to pay a non-existent debt.
“That Incentro Africa is acting unreasonably in pursuing liquidation of the company instead of pursuing other remedies as set out in the agreement between the parties,” the firm said in the petition.
It said the publication of the liquidation process would cause extreme damage to the company because of the wrongful impression that the company is insolvent.
Twiga is a business-to-business marketplace platform that sources produce directly from farmers and delivers it to urban retailers, through a mobile-based cashless (B2B) supply platform, to access distribution into the millions of small and medium-size vendors in urban markets.
To operationalise and optimise its business, the firm had to engage a cloud services provider and the distributor has been using Incentro’s Google Cloud platform reseller account.
“For its suppliers, the threatened liquidation proceedings would extinguish the credit terms the company has, putting the company in a negative working capital position,” Daniel Ngugi, the head of legal and administration at Twiga Foods, said.
