Kenyan tycoon Jaswant Rai plans $32 million Nandi sugar mill

Kenyan sugar tycoon Jaswant Rai’s West Kenya Sugar Co. plans to build a 4.2 billion-shilling ($32 million) sugar factory in Nandi County, taking the Rai family’s milling business beyond its base in the western Kenya sugar belt.

The plant, in Chesumei sub-county, is designed to crush 1,500 tons of sugar cane a day. Once it is running, factories under the Rai family umbrella would be able to process more than 18,000 tons of cane a day between them.

Kenya’s biggest private miller

Rai is chairman of the Rai Group, a holding company with about two dozen businesses. Its mills include West Kenya Sugar, which sells under the Kabras brand, and the Olepito, Sukari and Naitiri factories, which together make up about half of Kenya’s private milling capacity.

The group has grown further through Kenya’s leasing of state-owned mills. In May 2025, West Kenya took over Nzoia Sugar’s factory and its 3,600-hectare estate on a 30-year lease. The terms include a fee of 4,000 shillings for every ton of sugar produced, a one-off goodwill payment of 208.3 million shillings ($1.6 million) and a commitment to invest 5.76 billion shillings ($44 million) in the mill. Kenya’s auditor-general said in April that no lease contract or formal handover document had been provided for review.

The Rai family’s reach in sugar has drawn complaints from rivals. Nzoia had accused the Naitiri mill of poaching its cane before the lease.

The family also had a long contest over Mumias Sugar, once Kenya’s largest mill. Rai and his cousin Sarbjit Rai, whose Sarrai Group is based in Uganda, fought in court over the right to run it before President William Ruto publicly urged them in 2023 to step aside. Both later withdrew.

The Nandi plant is the group’s latest expansion as Kenya leases its state-owned sugar mills to private operators in an effort to revive local production.