Company ProfileMount Meru Millers Zambia Limited

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Mount Meru Millers Zambia (referred to as MMMZ) was established in 2012 and is a subsidiary of the Mount Meru Group, a multinational company working in agriculture, energy and logistics. MMMZ produces edible oils for sale in Zambia. They source 95% of their inputs (soyabean, sunflower seeds and cotton seeds) from smallholder farmers across Southern, Central and Eastern provinces. They also import crude palm oil from Mozambique for processing and sale in the Zambian market. They hold about 45% of the Zambian edible oil market.

MMMZ has their own processing plant with an oilseed crusher (200,000MT/annum capacity) and an edible oil refinery (140,000MT/annum capacity).  They sell refined oil to wholesalers and the hotel industry, big retailers and also offer oil through dispensers via smaller outlets. They produce both blended and pure edible oils.

Project Description

With support from EZCF, Mount Meru Millers Zambia aims to;

1. Establish a sunflower out-grower scheme with 15,000 smallholder farmers in the Northern and Eastern provinces. 
2. Provide access to improved seeds and other inputs on credit, training and extension to increase productivity, output and quality. The company will buy all sunflower produced by contracted out-growers.

Marketing, impact on people and the environment

MMMZ wants to make sunflower oil more widely available in Zambia through this project. Sunflower oil is more nutritious than other edible oils and if processed from locally produced seed can be sold at prices which are affordable to low-income consumers.

The company is pursuing environmentally sustainable practices which include use of boreholes and water treatment and re-cycling and use of sunflower and cotton husks as biofuel for the boilers. In addition, they sell sunflower, soybean and cotton cakes, by-products of oil processing, to the animal feed industry.

Under the EZCF-supported project, MMMZ aims to support 15,000 smallholder farmers as sunflower out-growers for MMMZ. They aim to recruit 10,000 smallholder farmers in the Eastern Province and 5,000 new smallholder farmers in the Northern Province. The 3,500 smallholder farmers they currently buy from in the Eastern Province will become part of the out-grower scheme. In the Northern Province, they will introduce farmers to sunflower as a new, alternative crop and hence increase crop rotation.