Uganda's Fruit Factories: Five Plants, One Lesson

An Africa Brew Brief investigation into Uganda's fruit-processing drive: who paid, what was built, what actually gets processed, and why the private plant is the one that is growing.*

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Every year in Teso, West Nile and Acholi, tonnes of mangoes fall and rot under the trees. In Yumbe, during the years the local factory stood finished but idle, a farmer with about 60 mango trees said he earned very little because a sack of mangoes sold for only Shs10,000. Meanwhile, Uganda imports mango puree for its own juice industry. That gap between rotting fruit in the north and imported pulp in the factories is the problem Uganda's fruit-processing drive was meant to solve.

Over the past decade, the government, Korean development aid, Makerere scientists, a juice entrepreneur, a Danish partner and one family business have all tried to close it. The Brew Brief examined five plants. Four have been built and one has not. Only one has grown through demand alone.

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## 1. Soroti Fruit Factory: the expensive lesson

**Location:** Soroti City, Teso sub-region

**Owners:** Uganda Development Corporation (UDC), 80%; Teso Tropical Fruit Growers Cooperative Union, 20%

**Products:** Orange and mango juice under the Teju brand, plus puree and concentrate

Soroti was the flagship. It was built through a 2012 memorandum between the Korean aid agency KOICA and the Ugandan government, represented by UDC. KOICA's initial investment was $8 million (Shs 29.6 billion). A 2022 parliamentary report found the government had spent a further Shs 41.13 billion on top of that. The factory is generally described as a $14 million plant, and it was commissioned in April 2019.

The rationale was sound. The factory was meant to add value to citrus and mangoes from more than eight million trees planted across Teso.

**What went wrong.** The factory was built far too small for the supply around it. A Finance Ministry director admitted it was designed with a low capacity, and that farmers delivered more fruit than it could handle. The cooperative chairman said it could process six tonnes of oranges or mangoes every six hours, and could not run both lines at once. One farmer described the launch bitterly: farmers had celebrated outside the factory without knowing the machinery could not even process one farm's oranges in a day.

The purchase figures show the gap. In one year the factory bought only 500,000 kg of oranges and 200,000 kg of mangoes, despite the eight million trees in the region. Its chief executive said it was short of money and competing in a market full of drinks made from cheap imported concentrates.

**The financials.** The Auditor General's report for FY2024/25 showed an operating loss of Shs 5.371 billion, up from Shs 4.391 billion the previous year. Losses have averaged around Shs 5.5 billion a year over four years. That is roughly what the factory has received annually from the budget: about Shs 5 billion a year.

**What happened next.** The government leased the factory to a private operator, reported to be a former First Lady of Ethiopia. It then announced a Shs 40 billion expansion. At that stage the factory paid Shs 500 per kilogram for oranges and Shs 300 per kilogram for local mangoes. Its current capacity is two tonnes of mangoes and six tonnes of oranges per hour. Management says it is pursuing international certification and a separate processing line for mangoes, pineapples and apples.

**Value addition:** genuine but small, with the wrong product mix. Ready-to-drink juice is a crowded, price-sensitive market. Puree and concentrate for industrial buyers would have been the stronger product from the start.

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## 2. Yumbe Mango Fruit Processing Factory (Nilezilla): the slow starter

**Location:** Yumbe District, West Nile

**Owners:** Food and Nutrition Solutions Ltd (FoNuS), 41%; UDC, 39%; Aringa Fruit Farmers' Cooperative Society, 20%

**Product:** Aseptic mango puree for industrial buyers

Yumbe is the most interesting design of the five. It started with scientists. The project fulfilled a presidential pledge to support FoNuS, a company founded by Makerere University food science professors. The factory processes the indigenous *kagoggwa* mango variety, showing that university research can be turned into a commercial product. The government built and equipped the plant through NAADS, then handed operations to Nilezilla.

**The money.** Figures vary widely. By 2020 the government had put in UGX 8.9 billion. One business profile puts total construction cost at about UGX 13 billion. At the opening, the investment was reported as about Shs 30 billion. The Brew Brief could not reconcile these. They probably cover different stages and different items, so the true figure should be treated as somewhere between Shs 13 billion and Shs 30 billion.

**The delay.** Commissioning was first expected in December 2020. In 2024, the factory still stood idle. The cooperative manager said farmers had been mobilised but no mangoes were bought that season because of technical problems. A board member said the factory needed additional equipment ordered from abroad.

**The turnaround.** Nilezilla eventually began operating. The plant can process five tonnes of mangoes per hour, or up to 100 tonnes a day. It packs puree aseptically in 200-litre bags inside steel drums, with a shelf life of up to two years. It is expected to save Uganda about US$2.5 million a year in foreign exchange by replacing imported mango pulp.

The supply side looks strong. The cooperative started with 15 founding members and now has more than 3,028 farmers across all 26 sub-counties of Yumbe. The cooperative chair says more than 2,000 farmers supplied mangoes last season. The plant is projected to create about 200 direct and 1,500 indirect jobs, and to inject over UGX 1.5 billion a year into the local economy through fruit purchases.

**Value addition:** the right product. Aseptic puree is an industrial input with a long shelf life and a ready domestic market among juice makers. It reduces imports instead of competing with them on supermarket shelves.

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## 3. Kike Tropical Fruits: the private plant that is growing

**Location:** Kakooge Town Council, Nakasongola District

**Owner:** Francis Mugabe and family (private)

**Products:** Mango, pineapple and passion fruit pulp, aseptic puree, fine crush and concentrates

Kike started differently from the others. It began with a buyer. President Museveni explained that Olivia Mugabe Mitterer, the Uganda Investment Authority's representative in Austria, saw that the Austrian market needed processed fruit that met standards, and persuaded her brother Francis to build the factory.

**Scale.** Established in 2019, the plant has a capacity of 1,000 tonnes of fresh fruit per season. It works with over 1,000 registered farmers from Greater Luwero, Greater Masaka, West Nile and the Northern and Bukedi sub-regions. Employment figures differ: one official account says 500 workers, while another says 120 direct workers plus hundreds more indirectly. Both agree it indirectly supports over 10,000 smallholders.

**Markets.** Kike exports pineapple concentrate to the European Union. Mugabe says the products have been tested and meet EU standards.

**The constraint is demand outrunning supply.** This is the most telling statistic in the whole sector. Mugabe told the President that Kike meets only 30% of its local customers' demand for mango pulp, and needs more machinery to capture the remaining 70%. He took a loan from Uganda Development Bank to expand. The President promised more UDB funding and said the factory's tax issues would be dealt with.

**Value addition:** high and export-grade. Kike is the only plant here selling certified concentrate into the EU, and it has more buyers than it can serve.

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## 4. OranaGate: the shared-factory model

**Owners:** Southgate Properties Ltd (Uganda) and Orana AS (Denmark), as a joint venture

**Products:** Pulp, concentrates and bottled drinks from pineapple, mango, passion fruit and tomato

OranaGate is the newest plant and has the most innovative business model. The joint venture is valued at about US$6 million (Shs 22.5 billion). Its key idea is to give small manufacturers access to industrial production without large upfront investment. In effect, it is a shared factory: small brands can have products processed and bottled under contract instead of building their own plants.

**Capacity.** At full capacity it processes five tonnes of fruit per hour, about 12,000 tonnes a year. Its filling line can produce 4,000 bottles an hour. A second phase from 2027 adds a carbonated soft-drink line at 12,000 bottles an hour. Operations were set to start in May 2026.

**Strategy.** The country director says the factory will take in surplus fruit, turn it into pulp, and export it. The Danish co-director has stressed meeting international quality and organic certification standards so Ugandan produce can earn premium prices.

**Value addition:** potentially the most broad-based. By renting out capacity, OranaGate could do more for Uganda's small food brands than any single owner-operated plant.

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## 5. Nwoya Fruit Factory (Delight Uganda): the factory that was never built

**Partners:** Delight Uganda Ltd (makers of Cheers juice), NAADS, UDC, Nwoya District Local Government and the Nwoya Fruit Growers Cooperative

**Planned products:** Mango and guava puree, and citrus and pineapple concentrate

On paper, Nwoya was the strongest proposal of all. It had the largest planned capacity at 12 tonnes per hour. UDC's design specified a 4 t/hr mango puree line, a 4 t/hr shared guava-mango line and a 4 t/hr citrus and pineapple concentrate line. It also had a well-established private anchor: Delight's founder Julian Omalla farms about 1,000 acres of mangoes in Nwoya, plus 150 acres of oranges and 50 acres of guava. And it had a named buyer: Coca-Cola reportedly offered to buy 5,000 tonnes of mango concentrate a year.

The ownership plan was sensible too. Delight was to hold 58% and the government 42%, with Delight buying out the state's share and the government exiting after 10 years.

**The money promised.** In 2020, NAADS earmarked Shs 19 billion. Another report described a Shs 30 billion (US$8.1 million) partnership, with Shs 16 billion said to be secured.

**What happened.** By 2022, thousands of farmers were furious that the factory had not been delivered four years after the presidential directive. The government had given them seedlings, on the understanding that their fruit would supply the factory. The cooperative, chaired by Omalla, later said it was still seeking 18 billion shillings to build the plant. The Brew Brief found no evidence that construction has been completed.

**Value addition:** none yet. Nwoya shows the cost of a promise that is not kept. Farmers planted trees for a market that never arrived.

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## The scorecard

| Plant | Model | Status | Main weakness |

|---|---|---|---|

| Soroti | State-led, donor-funded | Leased out, loss-making, expanding | Too small; wrong product |

| Yumbe | PPP: scientists, state, farmers | Operating after years of delay | Execution and equipment |

| Kike | Private family business | Growing, exporting | Under-capacity for demand |

| OranaGate | Private JV, shared factory | Starting up | Unproven |

| Nwoya | PPP with private anchor | Not built | State funding not delivered |

## What African governments should learn

**Design capacity from supply data, not ribbon-cuttings.** Soroti was surrounded by eight million trees but built to process only a fraction of their fruit. A proper feasibility study links capacity to what the trees in the catchment can actually deliver, and adds room to expand.

**Before promoting planting, deliver the factory.** In Nwoya and Yumbe, farmers planted on the strength of a promised market. When the factory is delayed by years, the state loses farmers' trust, which is far harder to rebuild than a building.

**Don't put state funding into crowded consumer markets.** Soroti's ready-to-drink juice competes with cheap concentrate-based drinks. Yumbe's puree replaces imports. Public money produces better returns in industrial inputs where there is a clear import gap.

**Fund operations, not just construction.** Yumbe was physically finished well before it worked, because of missing equipment. Soroti cannot buy enough fruit because it lacks working capital. A factory without money to buy raw material is a monument, not a business.

**Plan the government's exit from the start.** Nwoya's 10-year buyback plan and Yumbe's planned divestiture are the right instincts. The state should build, de-risk and leave, not run juice businesses indefinitely.

## What African agribusiness should learn

**Start with the buyer.** Kike began with a known export market in Austria and grew. Plants that began with a political pledge struggled. Find the customer, then build the factory around their specification.

**Sell inputs, not just consumer brands.** Puree, pulp and concentrate go to buyers who need volume and consistency, and they keep for up to two years. This is safer than fighting for supermarket shelf space.

**Certification is the passport to export.** Kike's EU access and OranaGate's organic ambitions are what separate a regional supplier from a global one.

**Shared factories lower the barrier.** OranaGate's contract-processing model could let dozens of small brands start without each building a plant. That is a model worth copying across the continent.

**Use indigenous varieties as an advantage.** Yumbe built its product around the local kagoggwa mango instead of importing a variety. Local fruit with a distinct profile can become a differentiated product.

## The verdict

Uganda does not have a fruit shortage, and it no longer lacks factories. Its problem is that most of its fruit factories were designed around the announcement rather than the market.

The plant that was conceived around a buyer, financed privately and certified for export is the one that cannot keep up with demand. The plants conceived as political promises have either struggled for years or have not been built at all. Every African government planning its next agro-industrial park should study that contrast closely: build around the customer, fund the working capital, and get the state out once the business can stand on its own.

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*Editorial note: Investment, capacity and employment figures come from government, company and press sources and often conflict (for example, Yumbe's cost is reported anywhere from Shs 13 billion to Shs 30 billion, and Kike's workforce as 120 or 500). Figures should be confirmed with the operators before publication. The fifth plant chosen here is Nwoya; the Deshiburg pineapple cannery in Luwero was covered in the previous China-Uganda park article.*