Sunflower oiling my dream for a thriving venture

Located in a small, dusty but famous Gwa-Kung’u shopping centre, off the Nyahururu-Nyeri road in Nyandarua County, is a tiny and packed room.

Gideon Kariuki, the founder of Ndeka Virgin Company, has an ambitious dream for this small shop. He hopes to turn it into a huge factory one day.

In one corner of the the room lie sacks of sunflower and kale seeds as well as groundnuts. In another corner are three machines that Mr Kariuki uses to process cooking oil from sunflower he grows on his three acres of land.

When Enterprise visited him at his workshop, Mr Kariuki was busy crushing and squeezing the sunflower seeds to extract oil.

“I have been doing this for more than a decade now, providing Kenyans with pure natural oil, free from additives and chemicals,” says Mr Kariuki as he switches off his machines.

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

“After clearing my secondary school education, I joined a perfumes manufacturing company in Nairobi where I worked for several years,” he says.

“While working with the company I learnt the art of extracting oils from seeds.”

The entrepreneur says he left the job in 2003 and ventured into business, dabbling in a number of ventures including a photo studio.

“I also ventured into dairy and vegetable farming as I ran the photo studio. But due to the proliferation of digital cameras and smart phones I closed the photo studio in 2010 and decided to venture into sunflower farming,” he says.

He later sold his three cows to enable him purchase a secondhand milling machine for Sh40,000 and set up a shop for extracting oil from sunflower seeds.

“The machine helped me to crush the seeds and sieve the oil. I was making between four to six litres of cooking oil a day,” he says adding that the process was partly manual, labour intensive and slow.

He secured a Sh450,000 bank loan in 2013, and used it to acquire a complete refining machine. This enabled him to speed up the oil extraction process and expand his business.

“After acquiring the machine my sunflower oil production rose from between four and six litres a day to 60 litres per hour when the machine is processing to full capacity,” says the entrepreneur.

His main raw materials are sunflower seeds, but he also uses kale seeds and groundnuts.

“Apart from sunflower seeds and kales, I am experimenting with other seeds,” he adds.

“My product is labelled as Ndeka Virgin, which I package in quantities ranging from 250ml to five litres. I sell a litre for Sh300.”

He says his products are of high quality, having already earned the Kenya Bureau of Standards mark.

“The Kenya Bureau of Standards (Kebs) that has given me a mark of quality regularly inspects my products that have a shelf-life of one year,” says Mr Kariuki, adding that he has markets in Nyandarua, Laikipia and Nyeri counties.

He plans to extend the business to other counties. His oil, he notes, can be used for cooking or eaten directly as it has medicinal value for people suffering from ulcers, pressure and arthritis.

He trades the kale oil under the label, Canola, which sells for Sh350 a litre.

“Kale oil is more expensive since it has Omega 3 mineral, which is mainly found in fish,” he adds.

The father of three notes that he has been pushing for more people to take up sunflower farming as a business.

“There is need for farmers to embrace sunflower growing as a cash crop. I have been doing this for a decade and I can tell you that it pays,” he says.

“There are several varieties of sunflower that do well in Nyandarua. The 89, 98 and Kenya Feather varieties prefer the warm climate here in Ndaragwa Constituency and only take three months to mature,” he says.

“The crop is not labour-intensive and requires less maintenance in terms of pesticides.”

Mr Kariuki sells sunflower seeds at Sh30 a kilo. He also sells by-products such as sunflower cake to farmers who use them as animal feeds.

“Farmers only require to smash the solid by-products into small pieces for chicken or mix it with molasses for their cows,” he notes.

Although his business is growing, he faces a number of setbacks. Shortage of sunflower seeds in the area, he says, has driven him in such of raw material in Uganda and the western region.

Another challenge is that he lacks finances to upgrade his machines.

“There are digital machine available in the market but I cannot afford,” he says.

“Supermarkets require one tonne of sunflower oil per month, if only I have a larger machine I can meet the orders from supermarket and other customers.”

Mr Kariuki however says in the next five years he hopes to turn his oil extraction into a big factory with a good market beyond Nyandarua, Laikipia and Nyeri.

“I also hope to employ at least 20 people permanently in my factory,” he adds.