Alice Drazuru explains how she started her honey business. PHOTO/GEORGE KATONGOLE
When Alice Drazuru, a senior auditor at the Office of the Auditor General, from Arua District saw how abundant organic honey produced in West Nile was lacking in purity, she spotted a golden business opportunity.
Drazuru, founder and chief financier of Karlice, an agribusiness priding themselves as producers of pure natural honey from Arua since 2019, says giving the best products on the market is her way of work.
Karlice, which also processes peanuts, is a joint
business name for Karlos Draburu and Alice Drazuru, residents of Canaan
Estate- Gayaza.
But to turn this idea into a business model, she had to implore her younger sister Mildred Asizu to manage the business.
Drazuru is stationed in Masaka District and returns to the city every weekend.
Asizu,
who is graduate with a Diploma in Business Administration, oversees the
daily activities of Karlice ensuring quality and availability of peanut
and honey products.
Since graduation in 2014, Asizu had worked from disadvantaged situations in restaurants, supermarkets and a beverage depot.
After two years at a soda depot in Arua, she resigned. Yet she had to go without a job for almost a year. Life was hard. She chose to remain in her rented room instead of returning home for fear of feeling humiliated.
Her brothers helped her with upkeep, feeding and paying rent. It was during this time that her sister called her for the peanut and honey business start-up.
Without a particular role, she is now dedicated to helping this family start-up become a sustainable project.
Connecting the dots
Karlice sources its honey and peanut from Vurra in Arua using a network of family and friends.
Valuable lessons were instilled among the sisters while growing up on the family peasant farm and bee keeping business.
Asizu’s favourite chore was taking care of the beehives although as a girl, this was a preserve of the male members of the family. From her parents she learnt the art of selecting the best honey.
Today, she harnesses her skills into an income stream by processing the honey, which Karlice buys as raw organic honey.
“Through the use of my indigenous knowledge, I have tasted raw honey from South Sudan and Ethiopia. The honey is somehow cream in appearance. But I can proudly say that Arua honey is the best in the country. Most of the plants in West Nile have a strong and unique taste which makes honey from Arua stand out. Yet on top of that, the farmers sell completely mature honey when the comb is brownish,” Asizu says.
Value addition
Asizu
says she learnt many business lessons from her parents even before she
decided to pursue a career in business administration. “I learned that
what you grow will at some point bear fruits and that making money
depends on the quality of your product,” she said.
The production, purchase and sale of natural bee honey are the main activities of Karlice. Most of the honey is consumed in the housing estate while the rest is sold to clients in Masaka and Jinja.
“Our primary operation is to clean the honey of any impurities at harvest and comb particles. We sieve the honey to get the clean content. Then we package it for sale,” Asizu says.
The company’s main emphasis is placed on the quality of their honey, is are regularly checked by a fully equipped in-house laboratory. Karlice ensures that all their processing and storage facilities meet the veterinary and hygienic regulations.
Asizu
explains that they recently acquired a honey bottling stainless steel
tank which is essentially used to keep the honey fresh and safe from
contamination and a honey testing machine to ensure quality.
Plant
nectar and pollen collected by honey bees may contain residues of active
substances from plants. Asizu says that they wanted to make their
production process more effective.
“We assess our honey right from the farm and at the store to ensure consistent quality. From the farmers, the residues must not exceed 10parts-per-billion,” she says of the company’s priority on customer satisfaction.
Quality assurance
Honey
is increasingly becoming an essential commodity because of its
acclaimed health aspects. This exposes it to frauds and adulteration.
By 2017, it was reported that Uganda was harvesting only one per cent of a potential 500,000 tonnes of honey per year. This implied that Uganda does not meet home-grown demands for honey, let alone the potential export market.
The US-based Food Safety Magazine published a report in 2009 indicating that honey is adulterated with cheaper sweeteners including sugar syrups and molasses inverted by acids or enzymes from corn, sugar cane, sugar beet and syrups.
Asizu’s valuable experience while growing up on a bee farm in Ayivu County exposed her to several ways of testing real honey.
Asizu explains that careful testing of honey before packing is important. With her vast knowledge, she says that one can apply a few tricks to know whether they have bought real honey free from adulterants.
First she says that the easiest way of testing the purity of honey at home is by crystallisation. She says that real honey crystallises over a period of time, especially when it is stored in a cool place. “In case the honey is adulterated honey, it will always retain the same consistency,” she hints.
Another way of ensuring one has bought quality honey is by dropping a teaspoon of honey in water. If the honey is pure, it will not easily mix with water.
Another easy way of checking the quality of honey is by heating. If the honey forms bubbles, it is an indication of adulteration with substitutes of sugar.
One can also put honey on a plate and put paper on it and if the paper soaks the honey, then it is adulterated. “Real honey is thick and does not get absorbed by a piece of paper,” Asizu says.
Karlice’s honey is top of its class thanks to its careful production process. A one-litre bottle of honey is sold at Shs20,000 with the smallest pack is sold at Shs5,000. A 800gm bottle of peanut is sold at Shs10,000.
“My pleasure is seeing a customer placing another order. This shows that they are confident of our products,” Asizu says.
Challenges
The
impact of coronavirus restrictions on the honey business was underlined
by sales dropping as low as 50 per cent compared to the earlier months.
Movements to far places in Masaka and Jinja were put on hold under the government’s lockdown measures to limit transmission of the virus, which effectively left Karlice with markets around Gayaza.
“The lockdown froze the markets as people we were supposed to supply were spending on essential products,” Asizu says.
But since the government announced a partial lifting of restrictions on May 3, Asizu says there was a surge in demand.
Yet the long-term problem is with the farm gate prices. Asizu says that prices keep fluctuating at the farm “yet you cannot keep changing prices”.
Lessons
Karlice’s current production capacity is 20,000 litres which are stocked for up to five months.
Asizu says that people who buy larger quantities take a lot of time to return. The customers who regularly buy are the ones that take one litre and less.
Karlice employs the household work strategy where work is shared among all members of the family.
While Asizu is involved in the daily operations, each of the four children in the family contributes to the overall production of honey and peanuts. The mother is involved in marketing, so is the father.
“Apart from the office work, the kids learn that there is another way to earn money. That you don’t need a white-collar job to make it in life. It is an example we are setting for the children,” she says.
Asizu says Karlice now wants to penetrate into the market and to increase sales growth. The plan, according to Asizu, is to expand into new territories. She explains that positive customer reviews make them think of a wider market.
“We have satisfied our core customers and now we want to spread our wings elsewhere while also maintaining the quality of our products,” she says.
How to start a honey business
Honey business can give a 100 per cent turn over every month.
Honey is a commodity that is well sought after in Uganda and other countries.
It is eaten by all ages ranging from the adults, youth and children either directly or indirectly. It is got from a beehive, golden brown in colour and very thick. It has various uses mostly for medicines, cosmetics and food.
How to know original honey
Dip
your hand inside the honey and drop a few to the ground if it is
original honey it will go down consistently as a thread without
breaking.
Put a spoonful of honey inside a glass of water, if the
honey goes down to the bottom of the glass without mixing with the
water, then the honey is proven to be pure. Personally, I think this is
the best way to test for original honey.
Put a few drops of honey on sand. If it is pure, it will not sink immediately.
Also, put a stick of matches inside honey and strike the match. If it ignites, it is confirmed to be original honey. Some people believe that natural honey does not attract insects.
How to find buyers
Advertise
your product by word of mouth. By telling people around you about the
business, speak to people in your offices, church, school etc. or by
distributing printed flyers.
Give out sample test of the honey for people to be more convinced of the originality of your product.
Yes, you can do that, when it comes to marketing you just have to go the extra length to attract customers. Look out for companies that buy honey and use them for production.
Marketing
Supply to the market, hospitals, clinics, schools, stores, malls, supermarkets, and individuals.
You must know that packaging and branding is very important in this kind of business. Use very attractive and catchy colours and names to attract your customers’ attention. Make sure your branded name and packaging materials are genuine.
You can package it in both plastic and bottles but make it cute and appealing. You can customise or brand your honey for greater patronage.
Branded honey is mostly perceived to be hygienic and original by big stores, and organisations. You can place a label on the container you are using such as ‘Pure Honey’. Sealed and well packaged honey moves in the market more than others that are not.
Challenges
Honey being thick and light. Some people get it so wrong when honey is watery.
They term it to be adulterated. I once sold honey to my friend because it was watery she termed it adulterated. And the honey was pure. When I was almost exhausting the last batch I kept plenty for my personal use.
That honey is watery doesn’t mean it is adulterated. This mostly happens during the rainy season because honey absorbs water easily. It could also be due to the source of nectar. If nectar is watery bees will produce watery honey and vice versa.
Uses of honey
Honey can be used in the field of medicine as an alternative for sugar for diabetic patients and for people that avoid sugar.
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