Releaf Nigeria Agritech Startup Plans Expansion into more crops, Markets

Nigerian startup Releaf plans to expand into more crops and West African Markets. Releaf is a company that develops proprietary software and hardware solutions to drive the industrialization of food processing in Africa.

The company was established in 2017, and participated in the Y Combinator accelerator programme in Silicon Valley in the same year, however, it started to operate in the oil palm sector in 2019, and in January this year, it deployed its proprietary technology.

Ikenna Nzewi, who co-founded Releaf alongside Uzo Ayogu and Isaiah Udotong said “Our hardware enhances the quality and availability of raw materials for food factories and outsourcing software connects us directly to more than 2,000 smallholder farmers.”

“Starting in Nigeria’s oil palm sector, we are creating technology that will make farmers and food factories in Africa more efficient and profitable.”

Nigeria is the largest producer of oil palm in the world from smallholders, with 80 % of its total market share. However, the production of palm kernel is low because a lot of farmers still depend on ineffective processes for de-shelling which includes using rocks and inefficient hardware. Ninety percent of factories run below 50% of their proposed capacity due to a lack of quality raw material and lack of funding to buy them.

Nwezi said “having that in mind, we act as a bridge between smallholder farmers and food manufacturing companies, provide farmers with working capital so they can access more equipment and palm kernel, and process the raw material into factory-grade inputs for vegetable oil factories.”

“We also work with farmers to improve their monthly income by up to 5x, and grow their wealth by enabling them to spend their time on the most profitable aspects of palm production and financing increased local processing capacity.”

The startup closed its seed funding round in Q2 of this year, including investors such as Samurai Incubate and Future Africa, and plans to use the funds to increase uptake, which Nwezi says has been “great” so far.

The firm closed its seed funding round in the second quarter of this year which includes investors like Future Africa, and Samura Incubate, and plans to use the funds to raise its uptake. We have a network of over 2,000 smallholder farmers, with around 600 that consistently provide output for offtake. We will keep exploring opportunities to penetrate the market a little further, however, we aim at strengthening our relationship and the value we create for our most productive smallholder partners, rather than focusing on numbers for the sake of it.

Nonetheless, Releaf is focused on growth. It plans to expand across West Africa in oil palm and into additional crops for a continental footprint in due course, building a network of decentralized factories that will power the industrialization of food processing. But how does it monetize?

“After acquiring palm nuts from our network of smallholders, we process them into factory-grade inputs for vegetable oil manufacturers. These factories typically need to buy in large quantities and high quality so our quality assurance and volume mean that we are able to secure significant orders from manufactures that go on to produce a vegetable oil that consumers buy. We’ve experienced double-digit growth every month since commencing operations in January and expect to maintain this growth indefinitely,” said Nwezi.