Extraction of ASILI ESSENTIALS OILS from herbs, gums & trees
The increasing push for healthy lifestyle and the need to boost immunity has raised demand for herbs and spices. As one of the upcoming crop, the number of farmers in Kenya growing herbs and spices has also increased. Vanguard farmers keen on deepening their pockets are embracing this venture full throttle. Interestingly, Job Mumia a graduate and a co-founder of Asili Essentials Oils has decided to do it in a different style, letting farmers grow herbs and him extracting essential oils.
Essential oils are concentrated extracts from various plants. Practitioners in the medical field use them in natural and alternative health practices, such as aromatherapy, naturopathy, cosmetics as well as for bathing.
On the other hand, essential oils can also be used as insecticides and herbicides because of their nature of repelling insects.
The name ‘Asili’ means indigenous or in its origin form in the Swahili dialect, since all their oils are organic without any additives. They extract essential oils from specific species of herbs and trees. For herbs they extract from lemongrass, rosemary, lavender, basil, rose geranium, among others while they also source the oils from trees such as cypress, eucalyptus, camphor and cedar. We also extract essential oils from gums and resins such as frankincense and myrrh. The journey for Mumia began at the University of Nairobi in the year 2018, while he was carrying out a thesis research project for the partial completion of his undergraduate studies in Bachelor of Science in Pure Chemistry. The research entailed manufacturing organic paints and essential oils were part of the ingredients to be used in the paints. “Finding essentials oils was an uphill task because they were unavailable in the market. This led to me discovering a gap and ventured into processing essentials oils because I already had the expertise I acquired from the University. After graduating, we designed a prototype for extracting essential oils using steam. “Intriguingly, I come from a family where entrepreneurship has not been fully exploited but I am on a mission of changing this,” he said.
Asili Essentials Oils processing firm is nestled in the serene Kiambaa constituency in Kiambu County, has become a trailblazer in the region which has seen the company contract smallholder farmers to as far as the neighboring Counties of Murang’a and Nyeri consolidating small holder farmers into one entity for purposes of trade. Besides contracting farmers, the company also cultivate some herb species that they process. Their dealing in restoration of lands got them noticed by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) who had started a project dubbed Restoration Factory Kenya in 2022.
Restoration Factory Kenya program was intended to support early-stage entrepreneurs that are looking for solutions to today’s restoration challenges. The initiative was developed by UNEP, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and Bridge for Billions, who along with the support of Partnerships for Forests (P4F), supported up to 50 Kenyan enterprises to scale innovative nature-positive solutions across the restoration value chain. The Restoration Factory is part of UNEP Climate Finance Unit’s system-worldwide approach to proactively unlocking and (re)directing public and private capital towards sustainable land use, stimulating land restoration and sustainable forest management. The Factory aims to grow a global pipeline of promising ecosystem restoration enterprises through a menu of tailored business-focused training programs providing expertise and guidance on business planning, business models and financial viability. This pipeline of nature-positive enterprises will contribute to the acceleration of sustainable land-use investment that is necessary to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.
At Asili, they focus mainly on Business-to-Business (B2B); selling to business that manufacture organic products like bathing products, natural detergents, air fresheners, insect repellants among others. That drive has seen the company spread their wings to aromatherapy products that change the mood by using scent. They are majorly used in spas and homes to trigger emotions to mitigate fatigue, depression and tiredness when inhaled.
B2B is a form of transaction between businesses, such as one involving a manufacturer and wholesaler, or a wholesaler and a retailer. It refers to business that is conducted between companies, rather than between a company and individual consumer. Business-to-business stands in contrast to business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-government (B2G) transactions.
“Our strategy to focus more on B2B was informed by the fact that we get fixed and reliable revenues from re-sellers and businesses. We also sell essential oils in small packs of 15ml, 30ml and 100ml when dealing with customers in need of small quantities. Essential oils need to be packed in non-reactive materials and protected against UV rays. Our oils are packed in aluminum and amber bottles” added Mumia.
The business has formulated deliberate policies to minimize the cost of production without compromising the quality of the products. This will ensure our products are competitive in the market.
It hasn’t been all rosy at the Asili Essential Oils, Mumia recalls the numerous challenges that they have encountered First, access to credit from financial institutions was a major hindrance due to lack of a good history in terms of bank statements and this forced the director to bootstrap for the business.
Herbs are very expensive to buy; the cost of electricity is also high and they use electricity to extract. Sustainability is another challenge, there are very few farmers engaging in herb farming in Kenya and they have taken upon themselves to be on the lead in sensitizing farmers to embrace herb farming because they are high value crops and their returns are amazing. “We have undertaken upon ourselves to provide seedlings to farmers who want to join the bandwagon. We offtake of the harvest and pay them per kilogram. For our future, we intend to introduce more species in our portfolio and increase the number of our contracted farmers” he concluded.
