Cereal manufacturer Weetabix East Africa has announced it is planning to double its investment in the region by sourcing local wheat
According to Weetabix East Africa, the company will work with small-scale farmers in Kenya to cut the amount of wheat it currently imports.
Speaking at the launch of the company’s new marketing campaign, managing director Ahsan Manji said three commercial farmers in Narok and Nakuru have already agreed to grow wheat specifically for Weetabix East Africa.
“We are working with commercial farmers and the reason for that is to understand whether certain regions in the country such as Narok can give us the right quality of wheat,” Manji said.
“We want to take that module and we want to use small-scale local farmers. We will then have 10 to 20 small-scale farmers that we would acquire our wheat from,” he added.
Manji claimed demand for cereals in the region has increased from 1.5mn kg to 8.5mn kg per day and, in line with this, Weetabix East Africa will increase its reliance on local wheat from 60 per cent to 100 per cent by the end of 2014.
“Weetabix primarily has used imported wheat for a number of years. Early last year we made a big approach into using local wheat because we believe that the local farmers give us the right quality of wheat,” Manji said.
