How much economic value can one derive from maize cobs? To most small-holder maize growing households, there is little else they can use them for once the grain has been shelled. More often, they are discarded, used as cooking fuel or as aminal feeds.
To Indubhai Patel and his family, however, maize cobs are a valuable raw material that has seen them make a name in Kenya’s industrial sector.
From maize cobs, their factory extracts furfural, acetic and formic acids. The byproducts have a wide range of uses, including as a jet fuel additive, textile products, oil-lubricant refining, agrochemicals, fertilisers, and tanneries, among others.
With his son Divyesh Patel, in 2019 Mr Patel started Bio-Corn Products (EPZ) Limited (BCPL), a Kenyan bio-chemical plant.
The plant, which sits on a 23-acre plot, is designed to process 80,000 metric tonnes (MT) of maize cob every year, translating to a requirement of around 220MT per day.
“As we ramp-up our process, this is what we will be looking at achieving in terms of cob collection this year,” says Veeral Patel, Indubhai’s grandson and CEO of Bio-Corn.
To ensure a steady supply of cobs, the firm has contracted over 70,000 farmers in Uasin Gishu, Trans Nzoia, and other western Kenya regions.
“We aim to register another 200,000 farmers by February of this year in the thick of the maize season,” he adds.
The company pays farmers anywhere between Sh30 to Sh90 per kilogramme of maize cobs.
“We have carefully outlined prices which vary based on distance from the factory. Beyond certain distances, the logistics costs become prohibitive and that cob becomes uneconomical to process. Other factors are also incorporated into this pricing model but all the options aim to provide a mutually beneficial relationship between farmers and ourselves,” he says.
Currently, the firm has two major cob collection centres; in Moi’s Bridge (Uasin Gishu) and Kitale (Trans Nzoia). By the end of the year, it plans to establish an additional 20 collection centres.
“These will strategically serve the North Rift and Western Kenya region, specifically set-up to allow easier market access for small and medium-sized farmers who may otherwise struggle to deliver directly to the factory due to lack of transportation or prohibitive distances.”
When the cobs arrive at the plant on the busy Furfural Road opposite the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB) in Eldoret, they are deposited on a conveyor where they are taken to a mill for size reductions.
After the cobs are milled, they are conveyed into a reactor, which is essentially a large pressure cooker in the main process tower.
“The cob is subjected to high pressures and temperatures. The resultant cooking leads to reactions taking place in the cob which releases various vapour streams,
“These vapours then undergo a distillation process which separates and purifies the final products.”
The main final product, furfural, is a special green chemical that is exported to countries such as the United States, others in Europe, Asia and South America. Within Africa.
“There is strong demand for furfural from South Africa, Egypt and Nigeria. The byproducts, acetic, and formic acid are sold in the local Kenyan market,” says Veeral who is reluctant to reveal their export and local sales earnings.
The company directly employs 200 people and plans to increase the number to 250 this year as it ramps up production.
Unlike firms that incur massive costs when setting up plants from the ground up, Bio-Corn managed to keep its investment expenses low by buying an existing plant.
The factory dates back to 1978 when it was first established by a consortium of foreign experts that included United Kingdom’s (UK’s) Guiness Peat and Foster Wheeler as well as Eicher Weiss (Switzerland) in conjunction with the Kenyan Government under the name the Kenya Furfural Company.
But, after three years of operation, the plant shut down in 1982, when the UK holding company started facing financial problems.
It was at this point when the ISONS Group purchased the plant and property in the mid-2000s, rehabilitated and revived it under its current name.
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