Kenya’s largest milk processors, Brookside Dairy, is targeting to recruit at least 10,000 new farmers in a bid to raise supply of milk, following a multi-billion shilling expansion that doubled its processing capacity.
According to Mr John Gethi, the Brookside general manager for milk procurement and extension services, the factory expansion included installation of a powder milk processing line which doubled the company’s daily raw milk intake capacity to 2 million litres.
Brookside invested Sh450 million in the powder milk processing facility and Sh680 million on the building that houses the plant. The milk processor plans to recruit farmers, especially those supplying milk to informal traders and competitors.
MYC4 Borrower, Grace.
Brookside is keen on recruiting new farmers from Eastern, Central, Rift Valley, Western and Coast areas. Brookside is banking on increased farm gate prices and prompt payment for deliveries to attract new farmers.
Brookside is the largest milk processor in the country with a market share of 44%. The company concluded the purchase of local milk processor Buzeki last year. Other acquisitions made by Brookside include Spinknit in 2013, Delemare and Ilara. Brookside also made publicly known its planned entry into Ethiopia and Nigeria.
The Kenyan informal milk market is large and Brookside wants to tap into this. It aims to provide dairy farmers with an assured market for their milk and consistently guarantee payment for all the milk delivered to them so as to empower dairy farmers.
This is great news for a lot of MYC4’s borrowers. Several of funded and open loans belong to borrowers in the dairy farming industry. One of the challenges that they face is ready and consistent market for their milk. With the increased farm gate prices and prompt payment that Brookside promises, we are optimistic that this will boost their businesses further.
MYC4 