Turning waste into biomass briquettes for brooding chicks

When Rose Moses woke up to the news that the government was banning charcoal use in 2018, she saw an opportunity. At that time, she was an employee at a prominent research firm in Nairobi County.

Together with her 3 friends, they quitted their jobs and founded Eco-Makaa with an initial capital of Sh 21,000. The capital was to outsource a briquette-making machine and cater for administration costs for the next couple of months without anticipating market resistance.

“Convincing potential customers that briquettes were as good as charcoal and even better was hard. Kenyans are generally resistant to change,” said Rose.

In 2018, about 80 per cent of Kenyan urban households depended on charcoal for cooking and other uses like brooding chicks. At the time, the charcoal sector was valued equal to the tea industry, supporting the livelihoods of over 2 million people.

The high dependency on charcoal and a market largely resistant to alternative products affected the projected sales and eventually saw one of the friends’ fall-out in the first month. Rose and her partner, Kennedy, soldiered on in the hopes that things would become better with time which eventually did.

Today, Rose has over 18 employees countrywide and has branched out to make briquettes and briquette making machines known as extruders. She currently sells briquettes from as little as Kshs. 1500 for 50 Kilogram bag and the extruder at Kshs. 75,000.

The briquettes are bio-mass. This means that they use agricultural waste such as rice husks, sawdust among others which are environmentally friendly in the wake of climate change.

Aside from the briquette being a renewable source of fuel and pollution-free, the briquettes also take longer to burn and radiate more heat. This comes in handy for poultry farmers who are off the grid or want to cut down on their electricity cost when brooding their chicks.

A newly hatched chick does not have a fully developed thermos-regulatory mechanism until after two weeks of age. This means that they cannot maintain their body temperature properly and may die if not kept warm.

The briquettes offer a solution to this by burning a minimum of 12 hours a day which provides the chick with enough warmth at a cost-friendly price.

Aside from this, farmers can use the briquettes for the day-to-day uses of their household needs.

For more information on how you can use these briquettes and make a profit, tune in to Climate-Smart Agriculture on Saturdays at 7:30 pm on KTN Farmers TV.