How Sacoma grew, one problem at a time
Every part of Sacoma today exists because we met a real problem and stayed long enough to solve it.
An idea that started with farmers
Sacoma was founded by Perez and Sam Ochieng. Perez began her career in accounting and finance in Kenya before moving into the UK education sector. Watching smallholder farmers back home struggle to sell what they grew, the couple saw an opportunity: import African fresh produce and give those farmers a route into UK and European markets.
It quickly became clear that a route to market was not enough. Many producers had excellent food but little knowledge of UK and EU food safety rules, or of how British consumers' tastes were changing. Closing that gap became Sacoma's purpose.
Sweet potatoes by the roadside
On a trip back to Kenya, the founders met farmers selling sweet potatoes by the roadside because they could not sell in bulk. Sacoma bought the crop and shipped a container to the UK, but only about a quarter of it was export ready.
That loss changed our direction. The real job was helping smallholders become market ready.
Working with universities, researchers and the Natural Resources Institute, we trained farmers in quality management and post-harvest handling, and set up storage in counties including Kericho and Homa Bay. Within a year, farmers were growing to GlobalG.A.P. standards and export-ready sweet potatoes were reaching the UK.
From the farm to the lab, and onto the shelf
In 2016, MSc food students at the University of Greenwich turned those Kenyan sweet potatoes into ten ready-to-retail products, from luxury crisps to energy bars. Sacoma's own sweet potato flour, pancake mix and snack bars followed. In 2017 the initiative won Best Social Responsibility Initiative at the World Food Innovation Awards, presented at IFE in London. Read the full sweet potato story.
Sharing what we learned
What worked for sweet potatoes became a model for others. In 2018 we were selected as a CommonwealthFirst Export Champion, promoting UK products into Commonwealth markets. At home, we built a family of programmes for food makers at every stage:
- Sacoma Food School: food literacy for consumers, and practical courses on product development, UK import rules and retail readiness.
- Retail Launch Pad: taking recipes from kitchen to shelf, including test-selling in our own shops.
- Food Artisan Academy and Food Business Incubator: training and support for future food makers, market traders and food workers.
- Indigenous Knowledge Transfer and Smart Farming: connecting African Indigenous Knowledge with food science, farm tours and climate-smart agriculture.
- Outreach with schools and colleges, teaching cooking skills and food science.
Low-carbon food for smart cities
Our latest chapter is our Low Carbon Foods initiative: combining data, innovation and human-centred design to build supply chains that use water, energy and waste efficiently. Under the Seoul–London Exchange 2024/25 we tested a model that connects city consumers directly with peri-urban farmers. We exhibited at Smart Life Week 2025 in Seoul, and in October 2026 hosted the Smart City Collaborative Food Forum there.
Today Sacoma has grown from a fresh-produce importer into a research, development and innovation hub working across the UK, Europe and Africa, and expanding into South Korea, Taiwan and the wider Asian market. We are also a licensed Kendamil distributor for East and Central Africa.
