About us

Mount Elgon Orchards is one of the oldest horticultural farms in Kenya. It was founded in 1920 by a Swedish botanist, the grandfather of the current owner Bob Andersen.

In the last 100 years the farm has grown many different products, such as coffee, avocados, apples and peaches. Currently we grow over 80 million roses a year and this year we will harvest 3.5 million avocados which we will export to 3 continents. Because of the success of the farm we have been able to let our Mount Elgon Trust grow with many schools (currently our trust schools over 2,000 students), a hospital, an orphanage, a special needs school, a farmers training centre, a training hotel and so much more.

We strongly believe in looking after each other and looking after the environment, and this can be felt throughout all of the processes on the farm. Almost half of our farm is devoted to supporting all sorts of flora and fauna including wildlife including Colobus monkeys, Vervet monkeys, Aardvarks, Cobras and Bush buck, Serval cats, Genet cats, Mongooses and hundreds of species of birds. Our dream is to create 5.000 jobs, be the world’s first carbon negative farm (including transport to Europe) and have purely rain fed avocados. Among our projects, we proudly include:

• A hydro power plant which powers 70% of the farm’s annual needs, and a growing area of solar power: we love renewable energy!
• Rain water harvest schemes, collecting water runoff from our greenhouses and using this for avocado irrigation, which drastically reduces our need for external water sources and saves millions of litres per year.
• Re-forestation exercises and active biodiversity management, encouraging natural forest growth and rehabilitation. Due to these efforts, we are seeing the return of indigenous species into the area.
• Fertiliser recycling, meaning that we maximise the effect and lower usage of fertiliser.

This farm is a team effort. We could not be prouder of our team here of over 1.600 people and our great team in The Netherlands who handle the sales and logistics. Thank you all for supporting our journey.