An employee at Central Park Bees’ factory.
Central Park Bees, the Tanzania-based owner of the Swahili Honey brand, has grown its revenues from $469,000 in 2019 to $2.7 million in 2023 – a 475% increase. The company aggregates and sells honey sourced from a network of smallholder farmers.
The business first came onto the radar of Luni Libes, founder and CEO of agribusiness investment holding company Africa Eats, in 2018. Drawn by its standout packaging, Libes decided to invest approximately $21,000. Africa Eats has a portfolio of 22 companies.
Joseph Kadendula, CEO of Central Park Bees, developed an early interest in farming. After earning a bachelor of commerce degree in international business at the University of Dodoma, he began cultivating onions, tomatoes, capsicum, and cucumbers near the capital city. However, the heavy presence of middlemen raised doubts about the business’s viability.
“There were so many people between the production of the crops and the client. There was very little direct access for the farmer to the market and I felt like I had no control,” he said in an earlier interview with How we made it in Africa. While on a trip to China to procure farming equipment in 2013, Kadendula saw the prominence of honey in this market. Back home in Tanzania, most local honey was sold on the side of the road as a way to earn a little extra income.
Kadendula decided to explore commercial honey production. Without any experience, he purchased a processing machine and imported beehives from Kenya after failing to find suitable ones locally. “The beehive supplier provided some training and that’s where I learnt the basics of beekeeping. I spent a lot of time doing research online and watching YouTube videos to see what others were doing,” he explained.
In 2014, he started selling honey in the local market. It wasn’t long before Kadendula made better profits than he’d ever made with crop production. He approached his brother, Christopher, and Central Park Bees was founded in 2015.
From the start, they realised their own production would not meet demand. The company decided to establish a network of farmers to supply honey. By 2023, Central Park Bees was working with more than 2,500 small-scale farmers.
The company meets the growing demand for honey products both for retail use and medical purposes in Tanzania and abroad. It has become Africa Eats’ largest exporter, with clients in Europe, Asia, and North America. “They got to the scale where they can fill a whole container of honey or beeswax or both … And so they’re making nice dollar income now exporting,” Libes noted.
Watch our full in-depth interview with Africa Eats CEO Luni Libes: Investing in African agribusiness, Warren Buffett style
