Kakuzi Limited

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Kakuzi PLC is a Kenyan agricultural company listed on the Nairobi and London stock exchanges. It grows and sells avocados, blueberries, tea, macadamias, cattle, and forestry products. The company emphasizes sustainable farming and is expanding avocado and macadamia plantings while running blueberry trials to diversify its crops and reduce weather-related risks.

History in brief
The business traces back to 1906 when Donald Farquharson Seth-Smith arrived in British East Africa to start farming. In 1907 he and partners bought land in Makuyu and began an estate called Sisal Ltd, which focused on sisal fiber. In 1919 Kakuzi Fiberlands Limited was formed with interests in sisal and coffee, and nearby Sisal Limited developed tea grown from Nandi Hills. In 1948 Kakuzi bought Siret Tea Estate, and the two firms merged in 1966 to form Kakuzi Plc. When sisal declined in 1987, the company shifted to other crops. After a severe drought in 1984 and a Fusarium disease outbreak in coffee, diversification picked up. Avocados were planted widely, and forestry began on land less suitable for other crops in 1992, reaching over 1,200 hectares by 2010. Cattle farming started in the 1980s, with the herd around 4,400 by 2011.

Ownership notes
From the 1990s, Camellia Plc built its stake in Kakuzi through subsidiaries such as Eastern Produce and Lawrie Group. By the mid-1990s, Linton Park, another Camellia unit, held a significant stake. The largest individual shareholder, John Kibunga Kimani, owned about 32% and joined the board as a non-executive director in 2020.

Controversies and recent events
From 2017, Kenyan groups raised land rights claims connected to colonial-era land. In 2019 avocado growers in Murang’a county accused Kakuzi of contract breaches. In 2020 a UK law firm filed a lawsuit on behalf of Kenyans alleging abuses by security guards at Kakuzi since 2009. In response, Tesco suspended avocado supplies from Kakuzi in Kenya, with Sainsbury’s and Lidl later following. In 2021 Camellia settled the case for about £4.6 million, though no apology was issued. Also in 2021, new allegations of rape by security guards emerged, and Kenya’s Capital Markets Authority questioned Kakuzi’s CEO and CFO over transfer pricing and potential conflicts of interest involving the major shareholder.