When she was growing up Miss Jane Maigua used to witness her parents – her mother was peasant farmer while her father was a bus driver – suffer as they tried to put feed, clothe and put her and her siblings through school.
A dynamic trio of ladies
It was this early childhood experience that shaped and influenced her to develop love for farming and she wanted to use it to create opportunities for women and the local small holder farmers. In 2017 Miss Maigua, together with a trio of equally driven female Kenyan entrepreneurs – Loise Maina, and Charity Ndegwa – founded Exotic EPZ, an agro-processing outfit of which she is its current chief executive officer.
The Nairobi-based macadamia nuts-processing and export company supports smallholder farmers. Through it, the trio are not only selling but are also sharing with the world healthy products from the African continent as well as conscientise communities about the significance of taking care of their environment. “We source macadamia nuts in shells from thousands of smallholder farmers, processing and exporting raw macadamia kernels into international markets through a B2B model.”
Helping the small man
Miss Maigua says she was also touched to see the small farming community being exploited by middlemen who manipulated and set up their own pricing. So for her the Exotic EPZ serves as a vehicle to alleviate the farmers’ situation as well as to empower them to sustain themselves. She is well equipped to fulfil her ambition given the amount of knowledge and practical experience of interacting with grassroots organisations having worked with national and international NGOs including the UN on its projects that support small and medium enterprises.
Creating jobs
Since its formation the company has grown its supply of quality nuts and boasts a growing customer base in countries such as USA, Spain, Germany, Italy and China. It currently employs over 100 workers giving them permanent employment, and sources its raw nuts from over 5000 small holder farmers. Of the company’s workers, 85% are women and 75% are youth. “Our team comprises of 29 full time workers and 68 temporary workers. The management team comprises of a dynamic and talented team of eight, five being women. They all are highly qualified and experienced in their respective roles and are always highly motivated to deliver our customer promise,” says Miss Maigua.
Promoting sustainable environment
Apart from growing the local economy by embracing the small scale farmers, Exotic EPZ is also committed to promoting sustainable environment. It does this by using solar power to run its processing factory, recycling of shells as boiler fuel, including the use of energy efficient processing systems. Furthermore, the company is also launching a campaign to plant of macadamia trees as a source of income as well as for carbon sequestration.
Stringent food safety measures
Miss Maigua says one thing that sets Exotic EPZ apart from its competitors is the fact that they adhere to high production standards under high level and stringent food safety systems. She says “we have FSSC 22000 Certification, ISO 9001 certification and kosher certification all of which enable us to assure our customer of high quality and safe food product from Exotic,” says Miss Maigua. In addition, she says they have a strong customer-centric approach which is made possible by the fact that their staff operates in an atmosphere that fosters respect, teamwork, diligence, integrity, innovation, and high quality standards.
Positive about the future
She is upbeat and positive about the future of Exotic EPZ and a big part of this is expanding its operations to include macadamia oils and other specialty oils such as sesame, moringa and baobab. “We also plan to get into roasted nuts which we can supply domestic markets as well as the wider African market. We also hope to build our own factory that will scale up our production form the 2,500MT nuts in shell we currently are processing annually to 5,000MT annually,” says Miss Maigua.
