We are a private company manufacturing charcoal briquettes using salvaged waste from charcoal traders in the city of Nairobi, Kenya. We also manufacture water heaters that use our fuel.
Contact Information
Our Focus
We market a regular grade fuel to poultry farmers, restaurants, safari camps and lodges for use mainly in space heating and water heating. This is a long burning product with no smoke sparks or smell during combustion. Ash levels are relatively high but the trade-off is burn time. Most sales are in 50 kg sacks. We produce higher grade fuels for the urban barbecue market which are sold mainly through supermarkets in small package sizes (3-10 kg)
Our Experience And Interest In The Four PCIA Central Focus Areas
Changing domestic fuels is quite a challenge and we have this far made limited impacts on the mass household charcoal market. We have instead focused on market segments where price is the main determinant of fuel choice, rather than the household for whom custom and habit in cooking are very important, and fuel switching rarely takes place.
We have been in business since 1999 and since then have built up a reliable market of around 200 tonnes per month. Sales are now relatively flat, given that the company and fuel are now well known. We have also been pioneers in the briquetting business and have spawned several copycat enterprises that have, over time, eaten slightly into our own market.
We use imported Indian pillow briquetting equipment for our regular grade product to ensure standardisation of size and density. For some of our premium grade fuels we use locally made agglomerator machines, which have been designed and fine-tuned by ourselves.
We do not monitor our emissions or pollution levels, but the fact that the briquettes emit no visible smoke suggests to us that they are less polluting than regular charcoal, which is often poorly carbonised and can be quite smoky. There is a chance that the slower burn of our regular grade may result in higher CO emissions than normal charcoal, though this has not been verified. Ventilation is key, as with any fuel.
Relevant Publications or Studies
We have appeared in Time Europe magazine and CNN, as well as lesser publications and newspapers.
Our Contribution to the Partnership
We offer fee-based technical advisory services for other enterprises looking to set up charcoal dust briquetting operations.
