By Emily Mikwa
The Kenya Poultry Farmers Limited ( K P FL) located at Lolwe Estate in Kisumu, is an upcoming SME dealing in poultry value chain.
It’s a business venture run by two youth directors, Mr Hezron Opiyo and Madam Elizabeth Opiyo.
They mainly buy chicken from farmers, slaughter and sell to buyers. In a day they purchase between 200- 300 hens which they slaughter and sell. Besides, they sell eggs, chick feed, and drinkers.
However, the business has its fair share of challenges that they grapple with. Some of the challenges include: limited deep freezer capacity, lack of slaughter house, power blackouts and hefty power bills.
With limited deep freezer capacity, they store a few birds and sometimes when the birds are frozen customers have to wait for it to defrost, some impatient customers walk away.
Having an own slaughter house they say is advantageous to them since the cost of hiring slaughter house services is expensive and eats into their profit margin.
With power outages that last 2-3 days, make the frozen birds go stale incurring losses and the power bills being costly at Ksh. 10,000 the expenses then go up.
Thanks to ASDSP that supported the business venture with a hybrid solar panel system equipped with an inverter and a hybrid battery.
Once the installation of the solar powered cold room is complete, the duo is optimistic that there will be enough space to store up to 500 birds from the previous 300, they will reduce on expenses such as the electricity bills which currently stands at Ksh. 10,000 monthly, food safety standards will be met and this will impact on the confidence of the customers, with the support,they project their sales to go up by 20%.