NatureRipe Kilimanjaro: Changing One’s Hobby into a Major Business

Natureripe is a successful venture led by Fatma Riyami, an entrepreneur who turned her hobby into a business. Today her enterprise is a major exporter of fruit and nuts.

In the 1990s Fatma Riyami started growing perfect mangoes as a hobby. Today, Fatma is the owner and managing director of NatureRipe Kilimanjaro, the leading fruit exporting company in the entire country of Tanzania.  Clear comprehension of the growth cycle and sales markets of this oblong tropical fruit dubbed with the botanical name Mangifera Indica, thrust Fatma’s recreational pastime into her occupational purpose.

This leisure activity turned lucrative evolving into an established profitable business titled NatureRipe which has created employment for over forty employees since it bore its first fruit. It all started with the welcome of the new millennium in 2000 when, after having grown a substantial amount of mangoes and realising that there would be a great demand for such a product, Fatma came upon the idea of exporting this fleshy fruit. However, since it is prohibited to trade a product without owning a company, Fatma and five members of her family started NatureRipe as a financial vehicle to transport their prize mangoes over Tanzanian borders. Immediately thereafter dispatch of this refreshing commodity commenced into the Middle East and Oman.

Fatma Riyami, Owner of NatureRipe

Since mangoes are seasonal and ripening is limited to only a few months of the year, NatureRipe recently embarked on roasting cashew nuts, which they sell along with peanuts and cashew nut bars, in order to ensure a perennial income throughout the year. These sister food lines allow for customers to become familiar with the NatureRipe brand, continuously associating the name of the company with superiority in healthy home-grown supplies.

NatureRipe is expanding rapidly. While mangoes and cashew nuts are currently the main source of income; bananas, watermelons and other fruits have also been planted on Fatma’s farms. These additional plants maintain the superior level of distinction that is synonymous with NatureRipe. Fatma decided to start growing supplementary fruits in order to get the maximum profit out of the farmland owned by the company. Since NatureRipe possess a large section of land and mango plants are small, there is ample soil that can be utilised to harvest additional produce.

Through the years Fatma has become an expert on the growing and picking of mangoes and keeps a close eye on her expansive mango farms. However, since Tanzania does not have a history of growing export grade mangoes, she’s had to obtain a lot of her knowledge from foreign experts.

As a result of NatureRipe pioneering mango cultivation in Tanzania, Fatma studied a vast collection of literature, researched extensively on the internet, as well as personally visited countries that excel in exporting mangoes – such as Malaysia and the Philippines – to experience what the practices of the pros were and to ensure that Tanzanian mangoes matched international standards.

NatureRipe has in turn provided a platform for fellow Tanzanians to make a living for themselves, by training unrelated farmers to cultivate top grade mangoes. Fatma does not see this as creating competition as there is a shortage of mangoes both for exportation and in local markets.

While first class quality is essential to ensure a high demand for the local product, the quantity of product being exported is also a constant obstacle to overcome. Since exporting a product to international destinations is expensive, in particular by means of air freight, the achievement of a bulk enough quantity of high enough quality is required in order to ship the product via sea freight, which is a more cost effective transit.

What began as a gardening interest is now a grand investment. Through professionalising, up scaling and diversifying this recent commercial farming concern holds the position of the main exporter of mangoes in Tanzania and is a prime example of what optimum fruitage and smart business sense can achieve.