Organizational history
Lualenyi Lualenyi Ranching Co. Ltd was incorporated in 1969, under the Companies Act (Cap 486) with 52 shareholders and the Ranch covers acreage of 106,388 acres. It is a Private Limited Company (by shares).
The Ranch is located in Taita-Taveta County and it can be reached by the use of Voi-Taveta road via Mwatate Trading centre after the first railway crossing from Mwatate.
The Ranch is located twenty (20) kilometers to the South, off Mwatate - Taveta road and approximately 220 km from Mombasa.
The carrying capacity of the Ranch is over 8,000 cattle whereas the current number is over 1,000 heads of cattle and 350 goats and sheep for the Ranch and over 5,000 heads of cattle for tenants which automatically shows that the Ranch’s capacity is not fully utilized.
The average rainfall ranges from 500 mm – 1,000 mm with peaks in April and November. The vegetation type in the Ranch include Acacia, Comiphora, open grass land mainly on the Western side of the Ranch, bush grass land on the Eastern side of the Ranch and river line type of vegetation along the Bura seasonal river.
The Ranch is in Agro ecological zone 4 & 5 (Ecotone) respectively.Water situation and Power.
Water situation was good since the beginning of this ranch with down flow of the Bura seasonal river which bisects the ranch in two zones. Our big dam combined with other several natural water pans scattered allover the ranch, could go without use of bore holes. Due to climatical change, this dam has of recently not received water thus forcing the ranch to do hydrological survey in search of water by drilling bore holes. The ranch has 6 bore holes with 3 giving good volume of water. The ranch has no electricity power but can be connected from our neighbor Sarova Saltlick north of our ranch.Security.
We have been enjoying good security all through except cattle rustlers suspected to be Maasai from Tanzania, however this situation seems to be arrested by our honorable government as we have been working together.
In terms of improving the ranch, the ranch has sourced finance from banks among other financial institutions.
While the management has been quite progressive in mobilizing resources from banks and other funding agencies like Micro Finance Institutions, the capital has not been much to suffice the needs. This can be attributed to two reasons; the lenders have been hesitant given the poor management history that has been there for many years; as a ranch, we were taking time to stabilize, have a clear documented direction in terms of strategy and also stabilize with the little resources we had. We can proudly say we are there in terms of the direction we want to take and how we want to get there. While we have received loans from the Kenya Commercial Bank Limited, they have not favored us much. The cost involved and lack of flexibility in particular during drought season has been a major factor that has slowed down growth in both turnover and profits.
We at Lualenyi ranch strongly feel that with County Government which has shown great supporter to ranchers we believe can help bridge this working capital gap and make our company realize the economies of scale so as it becomes a model ranch in the whole of Kenya.