Make herbal soap to generate income

Homemade herbal soap. In Uganda many companies and small scale home-based industries thrive on producing herbal soap and make a lot of money because demand is high. FILE PHOTO

What you need to know:

  • Many people always scratch their heads to get at least one investment idea that does not require a lot of money to invest in, yet pays. Dorothy Nakaweesi explores the making of herbal soap as a good business venture for such prospective entrepreneurs.

This business idea envisages the setting up of a plant for the production of herbal bath soap with a capacity of 200kg per day.
This is a kind of soap that contains natural ingredients such as the essential oils from aloe vera, patchouli, citronella, rose and sampaguita.
Mr John Musajjakawa, the Uganda Investment Authority senior investment officer, says the demand for herbal soap is widely spread across the country, making the idea good for investment.
“The beauty with this idea is that raw materials are readily available in markets, chemicals shops and aloe-vera farmers,” Mr Musajjakawa shares.

Investment
Mr William Mawanda, the director, Alinyikira Eco Investment, producers of Kyogero Herbal Soap, says: “For this kind of investment one needs to start small and it can be done in your backyard or garage.”
He says that starting capital for a cottage investment is about Shs300,000.
This involves buying caustic soda of Shs80,000 a litre; a 20 litre Jerry can of palm kenol oil at Shs140, 000, perfume at Shs20,000, and moulding trays at Shs50, 000.
Mr Mawanda said that with these ingredients mixed one can get an equivalent of 20 kilogrammes of the product which can give you about 180 bars of soap, each weighing 120 grammes.
“If each bar is sold at Shs2, 000, this will bring in Shs360, 000. Therefore, from each 20 kilogramme jerry can, you make a Shs60, 000 profit,” he said.
In Uganda many companies are thriving on producing herbal soap because the demand is huge as people become more health conscious.
Some of the products on the market are Movit Herbal Soap, Samona Herbal Soap, Mwana Mugimu, Aloesha Organic, among others.

Procedure
Oil-lye (sodium hydroxide - a reagent used to create soap from oils and water) mixture is blended very well until creamy.
While mixing continuously, prepare the colouring for the soap. In separate containers, dissolve a few drops of oil with a little of the blue and yellow colouring powder.
Use separate sticks for stirring each colour. Then mix together the dissolved blue and yellow colouring powder in one container.
Estimate the amount of each colour to produce an olive green colour. Then put it aside to set.

Go back to the oil-lye mixture in the mixer and test its consistency by using a chopstick or bamboo stick.
When the oil-lye mixture is already creamy, add the aloe-vera essence or any other herbs you want to serve the purpose and spring fragrance.
Add the remaining additives, and then transfer the mixture into the moulds and make sure the soap mixture is evenly distributed.
Allow the soap to harden for two to four hours and then slice it by using a piece of string.

Advice
Experts say that those who want to venture into this business, need to seek training on how to produce the soap.