Soya sausages? Yes, and they sell like hotcakes

Martin Ssali can be defined in a number of ways, including a social entrepreneur, industrialist or a social development professional.

He is the brain behind Smart Foods Limited, a company that focuses on innovative approaches of processing soya bean and marketing soya products to different market segments.

Identifying this business idea
Ssali started this business with a trial innovation of soya muchomo (marinated and fried tofu) in 2010.

He aggressively promoted the product and a number of people found the taste of soya muchomo irresistible.

With the product on the market, Ssali did not relent but embarked on a one year research project in 2011, which would later see him come up with his soya sausage business idea.

Hatching the idea
After a year of research and development, the commercialisation was equally tough.

“We did not have the money to start the project. We needed specialised packaging using a machine so as to have our product stand out on the market. We also needed specialised spices and other ingredients that are not locally available.”

“However, a loan that we secured from Mango Fund, helped us expedite our goal of launching a soya sausage,” Ssali recounts.

“Our launch included bits of market sampling, which according to feed back from some of those who had tested helped us to make our next move. We got a number of reactions in relation to size, pricing, appearance of product and taste.”

We went back on the drawing board with the desire to put something out there that would easily be marketable.

But amid all this, I received a sponsored trip to the USA by the World Initiative for soya bean to support Human Health, which partly assisted me and my team to develop new ideas for the product that we wanted to put on the market.

Uniqueness of the idea
We were one of the first in the East African region to launch a product of this type. The product recipe contains only soya protein ingredients, spices and soya oil.

Unlike other sausage products like chicken and beef, among others the soya sausages are cooked during the processing stage thus they have no casing due to the fact that they are purely vegetarian.

Starting out
“We started the company with about Shs250,000 [$100]. This was the first seed capital in our research and development work on soya processing in 2008,” Ssali says. The start-up capital was from a competition I won from the Rockefeller Business Innovation award, through Makerere (I@Mak).

“With this money we improved the product, developed some equipment from Katwe and we launched our very first soya product in 2010.”

Running the business
“Currently we have our product in some supermarkets. The 240 gramme pack contains eight sausages and is sold at Shs4,500. The 500 gramme pack with 17 sausages goes for Shs8,000.

He currently processes his sausages from the Food Technology Business Incubation Center of Makerere University. His team comprises of four staff; including a business manager, a sales and marketing manager, a production manager and one casual labourer. On average he sales sausages ranging between Shs3 million and Shs4 million per month.

Most of his raw materials are locally sourced from Kisenyi and Sesaco Limited in Kikuubo markets.

Making sausages
“We start by making a gel from soya protein isolates, which we blend with soya oil, spices and hydrated textured soya protein. The entire mixture is filled into ‘peelable’, cellulose casings,” he explains. The sausages are then cooked in a steam and smoke chamber. Afterwards they are cooled, peeled out of the casings, and packed in plastic tubes.”

Losses and recovery
“One of our biggest losses was made in the initial days of the business. We imported a number of ingredients, which in the end proved a wrong investment decision. We had not researched on what the market wanted, thus we ended up not using many of the ingredients,” Ssali recounts.

As a result the value of the products we sold was far less compared to the investment in the raw materials.

It was a major loss for a company that was starting out and only testing its products.

“…we could not charge anything but only wanted to recover the costs of production. We also had to invest in marketing and product sampling so as to drive sales, which cost a lot of money.”

“Worse still, the money we were using was obtained through loan which immediately put us in debt of close to Shs7 million.”

Luckily our financiers, Mango Fund, extended the loan repayment period with no strings attached. The financiers in addition gave us more money, which we used to run the business in a manner that was more professional and quite efficient .

Ssali’s clientèle base
We currently sell our sausages in supermarkets, including Uchumi, Shoprite, Capital Shoppers, Tuskys, Quality, and Checkers among others.

“We also supply hotels, including Africana Hotel, Imperial Hotels and Speke Hotels, among others.”

After we have packed we load the products for supply to different supermarkets and hotels.

We sometimes make deliveries to individuals but this is on rare occasions.

“Whereas sometime we are paid cash, most of our deliveries are done on credit with payment periods running as long as six months.”

According to Ssali, his company’s breakthrough was during the 2012 Uganda Manufacturers’ Association (UMA) trade fair.

“We had two selling points and the soya sausages sold like hot cakes. We were able to make Shs3 million only in five days and yet we had just launched,” Ssali recounts.

Lessons and knowledge to share
“I have learnt that working hard is the best option one can choose for any business, however, it becomes more rewarding if one adds the sixth sense of working smart. I have learnt to be patient, stay focused and to respect those who have made it because it takes more than commitment to have a successful business.”

He says the youth must stop thinking of and engaging in get rich schemes, because money is not made overnight. It is through hard work and thinking outside the box that one can be able to establish a sustainable business that can stand the test of time. “Young people need to choose their success path and stick to it. ”

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