Thousands Left Jobless As Brookside Announces Closure Of Taita Taveta Plant

Brookside Dairies, a company owned by President Uhuru Kenyatta’s family, has announced plans to close its Taita Taveta plant over “unsustainable business”.

The regional factory, Wumingu Cooling Plant, effective March 1, 2020, leaving at least 1,000 farmers who supple the plant with milk without a source of income.

The company bought over 45 percent of the entire raw milk in Taita Taveta.

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Wumingu Cooling Plant, located in Wundanyi town, has a capacity of processing 10,000 litres of milk on a daily basis.

In 2017, Brookside paid Taita Taveta dairy farmers a total of Ksh52 million for supply of raw milk at the Wumingu plant.

The company says the Taita Taveta regional factory has been making losses and that the business in the region can no longer be sustained.

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The company joins hundreds of companies that closed shop in Kenya in 2019, with others downsizing their staff numbers due to harsh economic times.

In 2019 alone, it is estimated that at least 25,000 people were fired from their jobs as companies struggled to sustain their businesses.

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