AATIF finances new plant for minerals and nuitrition supplements for livestock in East Africa

AATIF concludes a USD 4m facility to enable Coopers-K Brands Kenya Ltd (“CKL”) finance a new plant for minerals and nutritional supplements for livestock, thereby increasing local value addition.

CKL is a leading animal health and agricultural inputs company in Eastern Africa, and is the franchise distributor of the ‘Coopers’ range of products. CKL has delivered high quality products and solutions for livestock farming in Kenya since 1906 and has recently ventured into crop protection products to expand its product offering to farmers as well as capture more value from the markets it already serves.

AATIF considers the investment in CKL as a strategic partnership in enabling the objective of the fund in fostering local value addition, increasing farmers’ productivity and incomes which further contributes to reduction in poverty.

While making the announcement, Mr. Mucai Kunyiha, the Managing Director of CKL, said that “to enable the African farmer prosper from his agricultural enterprise, access to good quality, easily accessible and affordable farm inputs is as equally critical as know-how and farming technology. CKL therefore wants to contribute in the transformation of the agricultural sector in Africa by developing and delivering innovative and affordable animal health and crop protection products within easy reach of every farmer in the region.”

The Chairman of AATIF, Thomas Duve added that “usage of inputs in Sub Saharan Africa is still very low, and this is, among other factors, largely driven by lacking affordability of (quality) inputs, knowledge and skills on how to apply inputs which leads to poor performance and low productivity. CKL with its long experience has a unique opportunity to deliver solutions at scale that address the productivity challenge in the East African region. It is of utmost importance for us, that CKL is committed to accompany the distribution of inputs by know-how transfer to ensure their efficient use.”