Bimal Kantaria

Managing Director, Elgon Kenya

Bimal Kantaria is the Managing Director at Elgon Kenya, a company which has established itself as a profitable business partner to the horticultural floricultural industries in the East and Central regions of Africa. Elgon Kenya currently has offices in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia and is the largest agriculture inputs company in East Africa.

Kantaria has been on the board of Kenya Association of Manufacturers since 1998. He initially starting his career in purchasing, then onto sales and finally in operations.Kantaria has also been on the board of various business organisations including Institute of Materials, Institute of Packaging, UK and Kenya, Ministry of Environment of Kenya National Plastics.

He has been a finalist in the AABL/Forbes Magazine Entrepreneur of the Year Award for 2015.

Kantaria holds a degree in Masters in Business Administration (MBA) and MSc. in Packaging Technology.

Chris McLean

Customer Relations and Projects Manager, Panalpina Airflo

Chris was born in Kenya and has worked in various industries during his career.

He became involved in the flower business in 1998.

He started in the production side of the business working for growers based in Nairobi and subsequently in Western Kenya. The growers concerned operated multiple production sites growing different crops and supplying a wide range of markets with cut flowers.

In 2008 Chris moved to a sustainable development role in a multinational organisation involved in flower and vegetable production before embarking on a self-employed consultancy program for several years.

In 2013 he joined Airflo, a logistics company specialising in the air export of cut flowers. At that time Airflo was a member company of the Dutch Flower Group.

In 2016 Panalpina acquired a majority stake in Airflo. Chris manages customer relations and projects and is directly involved in cool chain monitoring, management and development.

Chris McLean, 4 October 2016

Elizabeth Kimani

General Manager, General Manager, Maasai Flowers, Sian Roses Group

Elizabeth Kimani holds a Bachelor of Science degree in horticulture from Egerton University and a certificate in Environmental Auditing and Impact Assessment from Africa Nazarene University. She is also trained as a lead internal auditor, HACCP, EMS 14001, QMS ISO 9000/2001(by SGS) and has worked in Sian Roses for 12 years in the Quality and Standards department before rising to her current position of General Manager, Maasai Flowers Limited.

Maasai Flowers is situated in the Kitengela region of Kajiado County in Nairobi. Started in 2009 Maasai is the youngest, but the biggest of the three farms that form Sian Agriflora. The Sian Group produces roses and calla lilies mainly for export with a total area of about 100 hectares of roses and 5 hectares of calla lilies. The annual production for the group is about 100 million stems of roses, with Maasai flowers producing 50 million of stems of roses annually. The flowers are exported mainly to European countries like Netherlands, German, Sweden, Finland, Russia, France, and UK. Australia and Japan are among other countries of export. Maasai Flowers has a work force of 800 employees.

Jane Ngige

Chief Executive Officer, Kenya Flower Council (KFC)

Jane Ngige is the Chief Executive Officer of the Kenya Flower Council (KFC) since tail end of 2004. She is also the CEO for Kenya Horticultural Council. She is a MSc. Food and Agriculture Biotechnology Graduate from Reading University coupled with post graduate Certificates in International Food Laws from Michigan State University, Food Processing, and Systems approach to Quality Assurance & Marketing from Wageningen University – International Agricultural Centre.

She provides leadership to Kenya Flower Council in the core activities of industry representation in self-regulation, Lobbying and promotions. KFC administers self-regulation through an internationally accredited Certification Scheme on good agricultural practice, sustainability, social accountability, hygiene health and safety, capacity building, environmental protection and conservation, adherence to which is the backbone of all KFC activities. The Certification Scheme comprising the KFC Flowers and Ornamentals Sustainability Standard (FOSS) and Quality Management Systems is accredited by the South African National Accreditation Systems (SANAS), as a Certification Body (C49), in accordance with ISO/IEC 17065.

Jack Mwaura

Group Commercial Manager, Siginon

Jack is an accomplished freight forwarding professional with over 17 years’ operations and sales experience along the supply chain specialty handling various commodities including perishables. Jack has worked in various markets in Sub Saharan regions to the consumer markets in Middle East, Russia, CIS, Europe and Australia.

Jack is currently the Siginon Group Commercial Manager overseeing the Siginon business Units i.e. Siginon Aviation, Siginon Global Logistics and Siginon CFS. He has held various leadership roles most recently; Country Manager – DHL Global Forwarding (Kenya), DSV, Swift Freight Kenya and UAE , Box Clever (K) Ltd among others. Jack was instrumental in the setting up of Swift Perishables Logistics in Africa and the Middle East and strategic Floricultural partnerships in the various consumer countries.

Jack’s adds, “I am excited to be part of the Flower Logistics Africa 2016. This one of a kind conference is a true testament that the perishables industry in Kenya and Africa has grown and with this growth comes great opportunities for global business and economic partnerships.”

John Kihia

Technical Manager, Oasis Floralife Africa

John Kihia has over 20 years’ experience in post-harvest management, agribusiness, research, training, propagation, landscape management and strategic management spanning four continents: Africa, America and Europe and Asia. John sits on the board of Directors for a few companies. John also manages the African division of the world leading company in the post-harvest business of cut flowers and ornamentals as well as growers media and Floral foams, Floralife Inc. a division of Smithers Oasis Company.Prior to coming to Kenya to establish Oasis Floralife, John was doing research in the Research department of Floralife in South Carolina USA working on new products and improving on existing ones.

John trains and consults widely all over Africa and other countries involved in cut flower growing and consumption in Europe, Asia (India and China), South America and USA. John has a Master’s Degree in Science from the US with a focus on Post-harvest physiology of ornamentals.

Parit Shah

Director, Silpack Industries

Parit Shah has over ten years experience in packaging design and performance innovation. Having joined Silpack in 2007, Parit is also head of innovation and R&D for packaging of Fresh Produce and Cold Chain Solutions. Over the years, the following solutions have been developed to address the various challenges in the transport of fresh produce in the supply chain:

• High performance packaging
• Light weight packaging
• Reinforced packaging
• Flower head protection solutions

Silpack has various collaboration agreements in place for the production of globally benchmarked solutions allowing the Company to “make locally to compete globally”. All our solutions are tailor made to meet the requirements of our customers as well as leveraging off best practices from around the world and using the facilities of purpose built laboratories looking at supply chain solutions and innovation on a global level.

Whatever the challenge: Carbon Footprint; Freight Costs; Damage of Produce, or Pack Efficiency, Parit and Silpack either have a solution or will find one.

Christo van der Meer

Project Manager (FLOW program), Royal Flora Holland

Christo van der Meer is senior consultant supply chain innovation at Royal FloraHolland. Christo combines his background as MSc in horticulture with his experience in operational flower logistics to improve the flower supply chain in terms of product quality and economics. Christo's focus is 2-fold. First to develop a sea freight supply chain from Kenya to the Nethelands, at the moment an annual 125,000 tonnage mainly air freighted business. Secondly to improve flower quality in terms of vase life mainly by improving the cold chain.

Ivan Mbowa

Co-Founder & CEO, Umati Capital

Prior to launching Umati Capital, Ivan Mbowa worked with Citigroup for 8 years across a wide variety of countries including Uganda, South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya. He worked across treasury, operations, credit risk management, investment banking and financial institutions banking.

He has completed the Chartered Financial Analyst Level 1 certification and is also qualified to UK Financial Services Authority Threshold Competence Level 2. He has a BA Economics cum laude and BA International Relations cum laude from Tufts University (US). Umati Capital, launched in 2012, is a start-up financial services company that aims to revolutionize access to finance through the consistent and innovative use of technology. Umati is currently focused within agri-business supply chains, retailer value chains and fast moving consumer goods manufacturers.

Samuel K. Njoroge

Director, Bullgate Co. Ltd.

I am a director of Bullgate Co. Ltd. We have been growing summer flowers for the past 20 years majorly ornit saundersiae.

We recently diversified to other varieties like Amaranthus, Daucus, Moby dick,Bupleurum and Ammy visnaga.

I am passionate about flowers and my vision is to be among the main exporter of summer flowers all over the world.