AgriTech | Nigeria

RELEAF is industrialising food processing in Africa

What they do:

RELEAF provides smallholders with extension services, serves as an off-taker of their produce, and processes the raw material into factory-grade inputs for vegetable oil factories.

RELEAF invents and operates proprietary food processing hardware to reduce post-harvest loss in the sustainable oil palm sector.

In addition to its hardware, Releaf utilizes digital technologies including USSD and open banking to work seamlessly with its network of over 2,000 smallholder farmers, who have supplied over 15 million kilograms of quality palm kernel nuts to food factories.

Why we invested:

The palm oil market in Nigeria is vast at $3 billion, with over 4 million smallholder farmers who drive 80% of palm oil production. However, the lack of logistics and drains on efficiency in the processing makes it difficult for farmers to thrive and scale their operations.

Releaf’s technology is significantly more efficient and can process palm nuts with the highest quality; thus, we do not think there is any immediate competitive threat to the company in Nigeria.

Releaf is decentralizing palm nut processing – bringing the technology down to the grassroots level – to enable farmers to focus on more revenue-generating processes in the value chain and access credit to power it.