A section of agribusiness firm Kakuzi Plc shareholders have affirmed their support for the company’s diversification and expansion plans following a familiarisation tour of the farm’s operations in Murang’a County Monday.
As part of its business expansion and diversification strategy, Kakuzi, a superfoods producer, has committed to executing a sustainability-anchored agricultural portfolio diversification agenda.
Kakuzi Plc Managing Director Chris Flowers said the agenda, with a capital outlay of Kshs 100 million next year, focuses on key issues such as integrating Agricultural Technology (Ag-Tech), water stewardship, measuring and reducing carbon emissions, reducing waste products, and hopefully, introducing new commercial produce such as Blueberries and an expanded livestock range.
During the shareholders’ visit, Kakuzi Board Chairman Nicholas Ng’ang’a said the firm had grown beyond a farm enterprise and is now an integrated international agribusiness player. In its growth journey and as part of a deliberate effort to deepen its investor relations, the firm, he said, will continue to engage its shareholders through familiarisation tours and progressive engagements.
“Our shareholders are our primary stakeholders, and we’re proud they can come to visit us today and understand how their investment is operating. We’re particularly proud to showcase our climate-smart agriculture, which speaks to the sustainability of their investment portfolio,” Ng’ang’a said.
On his part, Flowers said: “Market diversification for Kakuzi is a key part of our strategy not only for export but also for the growing domestic and regional markets. Having the combination of avocado, macadamia, and hopefully, blueberries as export crops being sent to Europe, China, India, the Middle East, America, Japan and the UK, as well as a strong domestic value addition range, we believe, gives us the greatest opportunities to minimise shareholder risks and maximise returns.”
He added: “The complexity we face today is greater than it was during the Covid Pandemic, Flowers said. We are now dealing with new significant problems which again are beyond our control, such as complex global logistics, caused by the closure of the Red Sea Shipping routes, and Climate Change which is making agriculture far less predictable.”
The Kakuzi share register indicated that the number of shareholders grew to 1,395 as of 31 December 2023, up from 1,362 the previous year. The firm’s shareholder profile comprises 1,154 local individual investors with more than 8 million shares and 97 local institutional Investors with more than 5.5 million shares, among others.
