Sokofresh
Kenya’s Sokofresh bring portable solar-powered cold rooms to smallholder farmers, helping them get a better and more reliable income for what they grow. The company’s smart tech encourages individual growers to come together and supply large orders to commercial buyers, cutting out middlemen. Even the poorest can sell to Kenya’s biggest food brands and exporters.
Farmers get on-the-spot payment from Sokofresh, and effective cold storage helps them sell a higher-quality product. This has raised farmer incomes by up to 20% with growers seeing just 1% of their fruit rejected by buyers compared to 50% in the past.
Its cold rooms are solar powered, mobile, have a maximum capacity of five tonnes and are manufactured by sustainable cooling experts Ecozen. The produce they store includes bananas, avocados, mangoes, French beans and flowers.
The company has two business models – under its ‘pay as you store’ system, farmers can use the cold rooms on a cost-per-kg basis. With this model, Sokofresh also provides harvesting and handling teams and a market linkage service.
Farmers are paid immediately with Sokofresh arranging onward sale of their produce in advance, bundling it with harvests from other nearby growers. This approach creates the volumes that attract interest from large-scale buyers.
”Denis Karema, Sokofresh CEO, grew up in a village where he witnessed post-harvest loss first-hand – something that motivates him in his work.
“My drive is the pursuit of wide-spread impact, using business as a force for good. Traditionally the farmer would sell to someone with a pick-up truck who would sell on to someone with a larger lorry, and finally onto the buyer. This makes the chain opaque because the farmer can’t tell what the end price is, or negotiate on that basis, and the end-buyer has no idea where the produce came from.”
”Stephen Kaboria, is a banana farmer from Meru County.
“Sokofresh is a good company because they pay 100% of the product value after harvest, and the process is clear and efficient.”
Other farmers who have benefited include Enid Gatakaa, who grows bananas in Meru County. She added: “I have not had a good experience with local brokers because of the payment terms and the handling of my farm produce. Therefore, I was impressed with Sokofresh’s professionalism and their 100% payment on the spot. I often leave them to harvest on my farm, without supervision, because I have seen their work ethic.”
