Kenya Climate Innovation Center pumped KES 5 million into Kenyan based ecofriendly briquette manufacturerKings Biofuels, as early-stage financing. The company being the second in two who have received fund from the body. Kings biofuels manufactures low cost, high energy environmental friendly briquettes from bio waste products such as sawdust, coffee husks and rice husks.
Kenya Climate Innovation Center (KCIC) partnered with Autodesk Foundation in the setting up of a facility designed to empower clean tech startups with early stage financing, that will enable them to develop sustainable business models and/or enabling them scale their climate innovations. The startups eligible are geared towards the conservation of the environment and control of climate change, which is one of the major challenges facing the country’ development, as it threatens Kenya’s key development drivers such as agriculture, trade, tourism and utility services such as energy, transport and water.
“The loan to Kings Biofuels will go a long way in managing the drying component of the value chain which will then translate to more revenues and help the country in averting deforestation and providing alternative clean energy solution for Kenyans,” said CEO KCIC Edward Mungai, ading that the funding would be used to meet Kenya’s demand for ecofriendly brriquettes.
Festus Ngugi, Founder and Director of Kings Biofuels Limited said, “We are grateful to KCIC for proving the loan facility which will go a long way to assisting in meeting the demand for briquettes.”
KCIC has incubated over 179 clean tech businesses, 80 of which successfully reached commercialization. It has also facilitated north of $15 million private sector worth of funding into climate change related startups.
