Sopyrwa

Situation

Horizon Sopyrwa, the only leading pyrethrum producer in Rwanda, built a business model working with farmer cooperatives to rotate crops between Irish potato and Pyrethrum. This rotation is critical for soil conditions to be at the proper nutrient and ph balances for Pyrethrum growth and production. If this natural balance is diminished, additional cost and risk will be added into the production of Pyrethrum, affecting the marketability of that product.

Sopyrwa wants to use greenhouse technology to create a controlled environment to more quickly grow a higher volume of healthier seedlings, reducing the need to import seedlings and decreasing crop failure in the field.

Horizon Sopyrwa engaged Karisimbi Business Partners to develop a business plan with a supporting implementation plan as the company builds greenhouses and transitions to a less tenuous method of growing their crop.

Karisimbi Partners’ Approach

Karisimbi Business Partners determined the market’s capabilities, engaging with local, regional and international customers and competitors to determine the challenges and opportunities for the client company to reach sustainable profitability and recover initial investment costs over time. The company’s relationships and reputation were leveraged to allow this project to test the new business methods before committing to an entirely new system of growing their crop, while maintaining and improving their core values and mission.

Results

The business plan prepared by Karisimbi Business Partners is being used to attract the support of value chain actors and potential investors.

The partnership between Sopyrwa and Rwanda Agricultural Board is now used as a model of how public-private partnership (PPP) could be established as the foundation for building high-performance early generation seed (EGS) systems.

Horizon Sopyrwa has so far completed construction of one greenhouse and plans to construct an additional three greenhouses by end of 2018.