Chris Flowers is the Managing Director and CEO of Kakuzi Plc, a Kenyan agricultural company that produces tea, avocados, macadamia nuts, and commercial forestry. He has been in this role since 2013.
WoK explores his background, career, and turbulent Kakuzi leadership.
Background
Born in 1973 in Southern England by a Lebanese mother and an English father, Flowers boasts over 25 years of experience as an agriculturalist working in Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, and Kenya.
Chris Flowers started his career as an engineer before joining Kibena Tea farm in Njombe, Tanzania, as an irrigation manager in 1994. Since then, his career and life have orbited around the agricultural sector.
He joined Kakuzi in 2013 after a 9-year stint at the Eastern Produce Kenya Limited.
His tenure as CEO of the 42,000-acre Murang’a plantation has been far from smooth.
Human rights abuse
Mr. Flowers’ greatest jolt happened in 2020 when Kakuzi was sued by 79 Kenyans at the British High Court over allegations of human rights abuse.
This led major UK grocery chains like Tesco – Kakuzi’s biggest customers – to suspend their purchase of avocados from Kakuzi. As a result, the company’s profits dropped by 25% in 2021.
As the outcome of the case, Kakuzi’s parent company Camellia PLC was mandated to pay at least sh 696 million to the aggrieved parties.
In 2022, the Capital Markets Authority probed Mr. Flowers and top Kakuzi management over conflict of interest between Kakuzi and Camelia PLC.
Minority shareholders in the NSE-listed company had also complained of being left out of the board of directors.
Record profits
Despite these challenges, Mr. Flower’s visionary leadership steered Kakuzi to an impressive profit of sh 845.8 million in 2022, more than double the profit of sh 319.7 million they recorded in 2021.
In the same year, shareholders received record dividends of sh 24 per share. Flowers attributed the profit increase to increased production and sales of the company’s Hass avocados and increased contributions from its macadamia and tea operations.
Aside from leadership and business, Flowers is a devout nature enthusiast. Speaking to Business Daily in 2021, he stated his extravagances as whisky and photography.
“I think I like buying good second-hand cameras, and there is only so much you can buy. The waiting for that shot gives me adrenaline,” said the CEO.
He posts the pictures on Instagram, where he has gathered a considerable following of like-minded enthusiasts. His favorite photo is one of an elephant giving itself a dust bath.
Flowers is married to a fellow agriculturalist. The couple met at a party in Dar es Salaam in 2008 and founded their romance on their passion for agriculture.
However, they don’t have any children.
“Children are fantastic, but would I have patience for children? I’m not sure I would. There’s going to be a time when we will have to start thinking as a world about population growth,” Chris Flowers told Business Daily.
Kakuzi history
The history of Kakuzi dates back to the colonial period in Kenya. In 1906, Donald Farquharson Seth-Smith, a British settler, bought 10,117 hectares of land in Makuyu, Murang’a County.
He set up an agricultural venture called Sisal Limited, which grew sisal for export. The business was successful and Seth-Smith expanded his operations to include coffee and tea.
In 1919, Kakuzi Fiberlands Limited was incorporated. It was a joint venture between Sisal Limited and Eastern Produce, a British company. Kakuzi Fiberlands grew sisal and coffee, and it also diversified into dairy farming and poultry.
In 1948, Kakuzi Fiberlands acquired Siret Tea Estate in Nandi Hills. This gave the company a larger tea production capacity. In the 1960s, Kakuzi Fiberlands began to grow avocados and macadamia nuts. These crops are now major sources of revenue for the company.
In 1996, Kakuzi Fiberlands was renamed Kakuzi PLC. The company is now a publicly-traded company listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange.
It is one of the largest agricultural companies in Kenya, with operations in tea, avocados, macadamia nuts, forestry, and livestock.
Shareholders
The majority shareholder of Kakuzi is the British company Camellia PLC, which owns 50.7% of the company’s shares. The global conglomerate bought its Kakuzi stake in the 1990s.
Billionaire investor Kibunga Kimani, who grew up in the Kakuzi estates, is the biggest private investor of the firm with a stake of 34.54%, worth sh 2.66 billion in 2022.
Earlier this month, Kakuzi rebranded to a new corporate identity aimed to underscore the company’s commitment to the development of the agricultural sector.
