MADE IN KENYA: Pana Food Technologies making pumpkin juice in Ruiru

Maina is now making juice from the pumpkin fruit, which traditionally has been cooked and consumed as food. 

"We are having a lot of problems now because of climate change, and somehow we’ve forgotten that these are the very foods that we used to eat, or even our forefathers. A pumpkin itself is a fruit and also a vegetable, which has been abandoned. What I really did is to research on it, see what can be done to add value to this pumpkin fruit," Maina says.

And from this research, Maina realised that the pumpkin can be processed into a variety of products, both food and non-food.

Maina obtains the pumpkins from local farmers across the country, and at his factory in Ruiru, he has a group of trained staff who help with the production of the pumpkin juice.

"The fruit comes from the shamba, you clean it, then you peel the outer skin, slice it into pieces, remove the inner part, then you start boiling. Then you pulp, then do the final pasteurisation again, then you pack into bottles and label," Maina adds.

Maina’s pumpkin juice has been tested and approved by KEBS and is now selling at his shop to offices within Kiambu and Nairobi counties. 

While Maina says the reception has been positive for his new product, his challenge is the limited production capacity, something he looks forward to overcoming in the near future and being able to stock the product in major outlets in the country. 

"The reception of the juice is just too much, because I have seen it, I have done it, so with the capacity I will say there is a problem. We have a problem of drying, we don’t have yet a technology which can enhance more of, for example, arrow root powder to be produced. The only method which is known is solar drying. Can we really try to think backwards for those agricultural products which we left behind," he concludes.