Bella Wine mellows from sitting room brewery into winery

It is no secret that Ugandans are among the top imbibers of wine in Africa.

Last year, a survey by US broadcaster Cable News Network (CNN) ranked Ugandans among top consumers of alcohol in Africa ranking her eighth globally ahead of Germany and Australia at positions nine and 10, respectively.

Prudence Ukkonika, the proprietor of a winery firm is excited about that tradition and is making money out of it.

That is how the proprietor of K-Roma producers of the natural organic wine and juices, built her brand of Bella wine. The Ugandan made wine derives its name from the acronym of the company’s tag line: ‘Belief leads to everlasting achievement.’

Ukkonika started the wine firm in 2000 as a small business selling affordable traditional wine. She was inspired by her departed son Godwin Ukkonika who left her with the vision for the potential of business after helping his uncle to produce wine in Kabale and sell it in Kampala.

When Kamugisha passed on in 2001, Ukkonika approached the national organic movement of Uganda that advised her on how to run the business. With one of her sons, she enrolled for a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration at Makerere University Business School where she majored in management while the son majored in accounting.

With that expertise, the family business where she is the manager and marketer while the son is the accountant was born.

“We started this business from the sitting room, moved to a garage and we ended up renting a floor in Wandegeya before we set up our factory in Kira,” Ukkonika narrates.

When the business started, they were manufacturing five litres of wine in the garage. When they rented a house in Wandegeya, production increased to 2,000 litres. With their own factory now, they are manufacturing 50,000 litres.

“I started with organic passion fruits which were making red wine yet people were asking me for white wine. I discovered I could make white wine from pineapples,” she said.

Packaging wine for export

The winery produces five different wine varieties, including altar wine, pineapple wine, Bella special, sweet red wine from hibiscus and passion wine.

The Bella Sweet Wine from passion fruits costs Shs15,000 while the other varieties cost Shs18,000. Ukkonika says December is the busiest month.
Last year, she sold close to 4,000 bottles while in January and February, she sold less than 2,000 bottles.

Special orders can be made and within two weeks, they can be bottled and delivered to the customers. Her average monthly income is Shs30 million with a net profit of Shs5 million.

When she visited Turkey, she found a company that has helped her pack the wine in five litre boxes. “I am the first in East Africa to pack wine in five-litre casks. In Tanzania, they use mainly pineapple and hibiscus flowers while there is little of it in Kenya,” she asserts.

Taking on the mantle set her on success path
Regarding positioning the brand on the market, Ukkonika says she had to market the wine all over the country herself and carry out her own research rather than delegating someone.

So far, she has travelled as far as Rwanda and Tanzania but has not ventured into Congo and Sudan.

Taxes hurt business

As a local entrepreneur with a total asset and capital base of about Shs500 million, her biggest complaint is with the taxes government levies on wines and spirits.

Much as they are adding value to local fruits, their revenues have stagnated although the business tends to pick up between August and November when there are many weddings.

She attributes her breakthrough to Turkey and China where she managed to get affordable and good bottles from Kenya and labels from China.

Her plans

Her immediate plans include importing cellars from South Africa so that fermenting the juice can be done underground in the five acres land in Kalagi because they do not use any chemicals in the fermentation process.
The factory has started making grape wine.

International prospects galore for Ukkonika
The mother of six whose children are part of the business is not worried about succession plans because of the children’s vast expertise.

The first born studied food technology and her master’s degree was in wine making and she is the company consultant. One of the sons is company accountant and another is the company driver and mechanic.

As a food business, she is careful whom she employs. She currently has 20 permanent employees, and 12 permanent farmers. The fruit season is her challenging time because then she needs a lot of labour to peel the fruits, crush them, wash them and she has to pay all of them lest the juice goes bad.

Bella Wine has now attracted international attention as an organic wine without chemicals. She also gets orders from Germany, United Kingdom and the United States of America.

Her challenge is getting an international licence to export the raw juice. She has been invited to visit vineyards in United Kingdom but getting visas was a problem. However, since she has managed to get one to America, she hopes to go to UK as well.

However, much as her enterprise would be one for Ugandans to derive pride in, she is among the entrepreneurs who do not believe free things pay.
With her 12 permanent organic farmers she is assured of organic fruits because they would not risk compromising their market where they earn between Shs3 million and Shs4 million during the season. The farmers transport the fruits up to Kampala and she picks them from the city centre.

Bella wine has had to toe the wine culture. According to Ukkonika, the winery held its second wine testing ceremony— an occasion where the public is invited to test new wine to be released into the market last week at Club Silk.

Advice
Her advice to prospective entrepreneurs is. “When you start thinking like a billionaire, eating like a billionaire, you will not progress,” she cautions.

Benefits of wine
Dr Emmy Wasirwe, a public health specialist says red wine is good for red blood cells because it reduces the effects of pancreatic islets of Langerhans which are tiny clusters of cells scattered all over the pancreas that produce the insulin hormone that is responsible for controlling sugar in the blood.

“When their function is affected, it means they cannot control sugar in the blood anymore, leading to diabetes. But research conducted on mice showed that moderate consumption of red wine improves the performance of the heart.”

But he warns that it should be consumed based on a doctor’s advice. “With pregnant women, it is good in regulating the red blood cells in case they become anaemic but for high blood pressure, I do not have literature on that although I suspect it may raise the blood pressure that may not be easy to lower,” he advises.

THE NUMBERS

50,000 litres
Average amount of wine (in litres) produced by Bella wine

Shs 100,000
Amount of money she pumped into the winery business at the start.

Shs500 million
Amount of money that the company boasts of in assets and liabilities