Workers at Bidco’s Thika plant. Edible oils giant has ventured into making animal feeds, building on its growing portfolio of products. Photo/FILE
What you need to know:
The venture has employed 90 workers in about four months since hitting the market.
The supplements are named Bidco Dairy Feeds and are available for chicken, cows, sows, pigs, and other farm animals in 10kg, 20kg and 70kg packs.
Bidco’s entry into the animal feeds market puts it in direct competition with Unga Group Limited, which is one of the biggest producers of the products in Kenyan.
Thika-based manufacturer of consumer goods, Bidco, has ventured into making animal feeds, building on its growing portfolio of products.
Bidco has installed a Sh500 million production line that has capacity to churn out 100 tonnes of animal feeds per day.
“We are producing mainly for the Kenyan market, but as the product grows we will penetrate into the region,” said Vimal Shah, the Bidco Oil Refineries chief executive officer.
The venture has employed 90 workers in about four months since hitting the market. The supplements are named Bidco Dairy Feeds and are available for chicken, cows, sows, pigs, and other farm animals in 10kg, 20kg and 70kg packs.
Bidco’s entry into the animal feeds market puts it in direct competition with Unga Group Limited, which is one of the biggest producers of the products in Kenyan. Unga has two business units for producing feeds, namely consumer, and animal nutrition and health.
The consumer unit produces products for human consumption while Animal Nutrition and Health division produces animal feed and mineral supplement products.
Unga, through its subsidiaries is also engaged in the milling of wheat and maize flour including packaging animal nutrition products.
Bidco is using sunflower seeds, maize and soya bean to make the animal feeds. The company has signed up 30,000 farmers across the region, who are supplying raw materials to the animal feeds production unit.
“There is a lot of demand mainly in the rural areas,” said Mr Shah.
The diversification adds to Bidco’s growing stable of products, which now includes edible oils, cooking fats, soaps, baking powder and detergents.
It also has plans to install a Sh1.7 billion plant to start production of soft drinks.
The company has secured a piece of land along the Thika-Garissa highway on which it plans to build the production and bottling facility for non-carbonated still drinks, carbonated soft drinks and water.
Bidco currently has a presence in 14 countries where it exports its products. “We want to achieve 400 per cent growth by 2018,’’ said Mr Shah in an earlier interview.
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