Abeja Investment Limited is a private, family-owned company incorporated in 2011. The company is located on Juba Road, Aboke Township, Kole District in northern Uganda.
The company’s main business line is edible sunflower oil processing, although it may venture into other sectors in future. The motivation for setting up this company was:
- Enhance the incomes of the local community through direct employment and by providing close market for their sunflower grains.
- Support farmer groups through training in better farming methods and post-harvest handling to assure quality and increased income.
- Provide affordable, healthy cooking oil for the community.
The company has installed oil expellers from China and filtering machines with a maximum capacity of 7 tonnes per day.
The biggest challenge faced by the company since it started operation in December 2013 is finding skilled and reliable workers to run and maintain the machines. The company primarily uses casual labour who learnt the trade on the job. The other challenge is meeting the large local market demand for oil due to a limited working capital base.
The company plans to install oil refineries to process oil for the export market because the product is purely organic with no additives. This is what the international market requires.