Company ProfileNew Rotations Farming Zambia Limited
CONTRACT COMPLETED

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New Rotations Farming Zambia (NRZ) is a Zambian registered company that is fully owned (bar one share) by the British company Canon Garth which specialises in groundnut supply chains across the globe. NRZ sources, cleans and grades groundnuts for export. All export grade produce is sold to Canon Garth for international markets – snack, confectionery, peanut butter and food ingredients.

NRZ currently processes around 2,500MT of groundnuts a year. Around 1,500MT are supplied by commercial producers and the rest by 2,400 smallholder farmers. Its processing facility in Lusaka has the capacity to process between 6,000 and 8,000MT annually. NRZ’s core activities include R&D to develop quality seed varieties tailored to local conditions, working with commercial farmers to scale up the supply of quality seed to smallholder farmers, extension and agronomy support, and aggregation and primary processing.

Project Description

With support from EZCF, NRZ aims to;

1. Expand quality groundnut seed production and develop smallholder farmer production, monitoring and offtake arrangements through a range of activities. These include acquisition of new high-quality harvesting equipment, increasing handling capacity, establishing new buying points, introducing new shelling technology, scaling up extension and agronomy support, and using groundnut shells for production of briquettes. The anticipated impacts of these activities include increased quantity and quality of production, reduced risk of aflatoxins, about 9,000 new smallholder farmers integrated into the supply chain, and direct creation of 197 jobs.

Marketing, impact on people and the environment

NRZ seeks to reduce price sensitivity by producing premium quality groundnuts with which Canon Garth (NRZ’s parent company and primary customer) can target high-value niche markets. For example, the Japanese market requires premium nuts (smaller, rounder, sweeter) for the snack market e.g. wasabi coated peanuts. The premium for such a product can be 200-300 USD above the international reference price. This helps differentiate premium African production from the bulk production of lower quality nuts achieved in countries such as Brazil, Argentina and the US where economies of scale are possible.

The company has made significant investments in R&D to develop drought-tolerant varieties that are suitable for production under rain-fed conditions. Groundnut is a nitrogen-fixing crop and helps improve soil quality and reduce the need for chemical application, particularly when grown in rotation with other crops which NRZ encourages. The company provides training both directly to smallholder farmers (mostly ToT) and through its NGO partners and also distributes accessible cartoon-style information packages to promote good agricultural practices.

NRZ anticipates contracting at least 9,210 new smallholder farmers suppliers through the proposed project. The number of new farmers to be recruited is roughly four times the current number. The company also provides good employment opportunities for women at the plant level where they are favoured for work that requires attention to detail such as sorting and grading. Through this project, more employment opportunities for women will be created at both farm and factory levels.