By ALLY JAMAH
East African Packaging Industries (EAPI) has been manufacturing paper products in Kenya since 1959, but now it has dramatically trained its sights on the multi-billion funeral industry with its latest offer — coffins made from corrugated cardboard.
The coffins, branded as eco-Jeneza, are made from recycled paper and have plastic handles on the side, with their key selling point being environmental friendliness.
The coffins, which can be assembled in 10 minutes, are a solution to the high costs of funerals.
"Our product will save thousands of trees being cut each year to make wooden coffins," says EAPI Managing Director Cor Roest during the launch recently.
Every year
Statistics show that Kenya loses 616,000 trees every year to the coffins industry, as 80 per cent of bodies are buried in wooden coffins.
EAPI has received thumbs up from the environment regulator, National Environmental Management Authority (Nema).
"Use of wooden coffins harms our environment significantly. Kenya’s forest cover is only two per cent and we cannot afford to continue destroying more trees to make coffins," says Nema’s Chief Environmental research officer, Francis Inganga.
The eco-Jeneza, which is made from corrugated cardboard, could save bereaved families hefty funeral expenses. |
EAPI officials are under no illusions that their product is a hard sell to many Kenyans, who believe that their loved ones should receive a "proper send off" to the next world, and that usually means using a wooden coffin.
Indeed, some of those interviewed by Financial Journal mostly dismissed eco-Jeneza, terming it "demeaning and disrespectful to the dead."
"Even if I am poor, I would not want to be buried in a cardboard coffin. If my family members do so, they will just be throwing me away," said Stephen Gikunda, a vegetable seller in Nairobi, adding: "I may not mind using it for the sake of the environment, but I cannot dare suggest it to my relatives. They simply won’t buy the idea," he says.
That’s why EAPI is investing in an aggressive marketing campaign to convince Kenyans to accept eco-Jeneza as a better alternative to the wooden coffin.
"The wooden coffin was stiffly resisted when it was first introduced by the colonialists. We hope the eco-Jeneza will be accepted," said EAPI Sales and Marketing Manager Meshack Dwallow.
quick profits
But the company is worried that once EAPI has nurtured the market for environment friendly coffins, other investors, with an eye for quick profits, will move in swiftly to harvest where they did not sow.
Apart from targeting the environmentally conscious, EAPI also seeks to position the coffin as a solution to the increasingly expensive affair of burying the dead. While ordinary wooden coffins cost between Sh15, 000 to Sh100,000 depending on the quality and size, the eco-Jeneza retails at only Sh10, 000.
"Why spend thousands of shillings to have a funeral while family members may be left in poverty?" asked Dwallo.
According to the director of the Kenyatta University Funeral Home Albert Gachau, the funeral industry is big business in Kenya and is growing fast.
"Kenyans have a high respect for the dead and are willing even to get into debts to give their relative a burial they consider proper and respectful. So investing in the industry will always pay off handsomely," he says.
Angels Funeral Services Managing Director J M Njuguna, says funerals have become a matter of show and glamour, so the eco-Jeneza may not be accepted by some bereaved families.
