One of Zambia’s leading Agro processing companies, Freshpikt, a member of the Vamara group of companies located in Lusaka’s industrial area is making great strides through its various Agribusiness processed products.
Vamara country Business Head for Zambia Nawaz Niyas disclosed to the Zambian Business Times – ZBT in an exclusive interview that all the beans and groundnuts used for their canned beans and peanut butter are 100% locally sourced.
Niyaz told ZBT that they have seen a significant growth in the output of both beans and groundnuts in Zambia and that the country had great potential to not only grow enough for local consumption, but export the excess as processed products to regional markets at better values.
“We are getting all the groundnuts we are using to make peanut butter locally, all the beans that we are using to make the baked beans in Zambia is also sourced locally. Specifically the beans that we are using here is called Lusaka beans which is the white one”, stated Freshpikt Sales and Marketing Manager Maria Banda.
The market has grown since 2013 till now; so we have also started to do exports as the Vamara group has a presence in 11 African countries. So, this further offers Zambian Agro products access to these other markets through our group companies.
Groundnuts still have a challenge of aflatoxins which usually result from storage methods that lead to fungal attacks, but most farmers have been educated on how best to handle the harvest. Once the methods of harvest and storage are improved across the board, Zambia is on its way to become a major exporter of groundnuts.
When asked on the annual tomato season that sees most tomatoes go to waste and end up rotting when it could be processed into tomatoes paste and stored, Freshpikt stated that one of the major hindrance of sourcing all the tomatoes locally remains the levels of quantity and quality.
There is need to standardize the variety of tomatoes grown so that the processing side is also able to get the desired output. There are so many varieties of tomatoes grown such that it’s difficult to get the right pulp quality and taste. So, there is more organization in terms of varieties and seeds used to make local tomatoes attractive for onward processing.
“As for tomatoes, the market is not giving us the quality and quantity that is needed for industrial processing, so to cover up that gap, we are forced to source some tomato and paste form outside. Otherwise for the groundnuts and beans, we’ve have good quality and good supply from the local market”, she said.
And Vamara Country Business Head for Zambia Nawaz Niyas stated that the company is working on developing the supply side for tomatoes.” We are in close contact with the tomato farmers to help them better understand how to produce good quality and varieties of the tomato that Freshpikt can use to make various tomato products.
“In fact, we are building on that as well; the supply chain. We have spoken to a number of tomato farmers and the challenge with the small holder tomato farmers is that they need to be in the know how. Our technical team is meeting with them and we are showing them the right way of producing industrial standard harvest”.
So, we want to be are able to buy fresh tomatoes locally and only import when its off season goes especially the cold season, when local production of tomato goes down”, he said. Furthermore, Niyas stressed that these methods of growing the right tomatoes are being taught to the small holder farmers as the commercial farmers already know about these farming methods.
