Jane Maigua is the co-founder and CEO of Exotic EPZ, a macadamia nut processing company that exports high-quality nuts to the United States, Europe and parts of Asia.
The company, which was founded in 2017, is entirely owned by women and employs more than 180 people in addition to collaborating with over 9000 smallholder farmers.
In an interview, Maigua said that her mother was a farmer and her father worked as a bus driver.
She mentioned that her parents struggled to make ends meet and get her through school, which pushed her to pursue entrepreneurship.
“I ended up working in the entrepreneurship development sector, collaborating with national and international NGOs, as well as the UN, on projects that helped small and medium-sized businesses start and grow. This gave me a lot of knowledge and motivation to continue pursuing my dream of starting a business,” she said.
After 25 years with the UN, Maigua resigned to pursue a career in agro-processing and nut exportation.
Maigua and her business partners, Charity Ndegwa and Loise Maina, founded Exotic EPZ in 2017.
The company sources macadamia nuts in shells from smallholder farmers around the country, prepares them, and exports raw macadamia kernels to worldwide markets.
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Jane mentioned that she and her business partners founded the enterprise to end farmer exploitation by middlemen.
“My folks were peasant farmers who faced similar challenges. I was also encouraged to start an export firm that would provide chances for many people, as well as to encourage other women to manage corporate businesses,” she said.
Exotic EPZ employs 187 full-time and temporary employees.
On the other hand, the management team consists of eight members, five of them are women.
“They are all extremely qualified and experienced in their individual professions and are always very motivated to deliver on our client promise
“We do have a lot of fun working together and organize several social activities such as team building events, celebration of everyone’s birthdays, graduations, baby showers etc. as the case may be,” Maigua said.
Looking ahead, Maigua stated that they hope to extend their operations to include macadamia oils as well as other specialty oils like sesame, moringa and baobab.
“We also intend to expand into roasted nuts, which we will provide to both domestic and African markets. We also hope to build our own factory, which will increase our production to 5,000MT per year,” she stated.
