I Saw Avocados Rotting in Jinja Market. It Made Me Ask a Question.
A few years ago, I was walking through Jinja Central Market when I saw a pile of avocados that had gone bad.
There were so many of them.Some were completely rotten and others were simply too ripe to sell. I remember looking at them and thinking about how normal this had become. When avocados are in season around Busoga, there can be plenty of them. Many of us have grown up seeing avocado trees in people's homes. You eat what you can, give some away, sell some, and sometimes the rest simply goes bad.
But that day I couldn't stop thinking about the waste.
Not just the waste of food.The waste of value.Because by then, I knew something that made that pile of rotten avocados look very different to me .Avocados contain oil and that oil has a market.
We Talk a Lot About Hass. But What About the Avocados We Already Have?
If you follow Uganda's avocado industry today, you will hear a lot about Hass avocado.
There is a good reason for that. Hass has become an important commercial variety, particularly for the export market. Farmers are being encouraged to grow it and investors are paying attention to the opportunity.
I think that is wonderful for Uganda.
But at Lamalo, we started asking another question.
What about our local avocados?
The big green avocados growing in people's compounds. The trees that have been there for years. The fruit sold in our local markets. The avocado that may never be perfect enough for export but is still perfectly useful.
Could we create another market for some of that fruit?
That question eventually brought us to cold-pressed avocado oil.
Wait You Can Actually Make Oil From an Avocado?
Yes.
And this is probably my favourite part of the story because many people still don't know it.
When we think about vegetable oils, we usually think about seeds. Sunflower seeds give us sunflower oil. Sesame seeds give us sesame oil.
Avocado is unusual.
The oil is mainly in the flesh of the fruit itself the creamy green part that we eat.
Once the fruit is prepared and the moisture is reduced appropriately, that pulp can be mechanically processed to separate the oil.
That oil can then have an entirely different life from the avocado we see at the market.
It can be used by a soap maker.
It can become part of a hair oil.
It can be formulated into body oils, balms, butters, creams and lotions.
And this is where I started looking at those avocados in Jinja differently.
I wasn't only seeing fruit anymore.I was seeing a possible raw material for the cosmetics industry.
But There Was Another Question on Our Minds
At the same time, we were also thinking about the products we use on our bodies every day.
Walk into almost any beauty shop and you will find shelves full of lotions, hair products, creams and oils. Many of us use these products without really thinking about what goes into them. But over time, more people have started reading labels, asking questions and becoming interested in simpler products and ingredients that come from plants.
For us, that was another reason avocado became interesting.
We are not saying that every synthetic ingredient is harmful, or that everything described as “natural” is automatically better. But we do believe there should be more room for ingredients that come from the crops growing around us.
And avocado oil is one of them.Instead of looking somewhere else for every ingredient used in our soaps, hair products and skincare formulations, what if some of those ingredients could come from the plants and fruits we already grow here in Uganda?
An avocado that might otherwise become overripe could be transformed into an oil that a soap maker uses. A hair-care business could formulate with it. A skincare brand could include it in a body oil, balm or cream.
That connection really interested us.Because now we weren't only looking at a way of reducing agricultural waste.We were connecting what we grow with what we put on our skin and hair.And perhaps, little by little, we could create more choices for people looking for plant-derived ingredients while creating another market for the crops grown in our communities.
That Is Why We Started Cold Pressing Avocado Oil
At Lamalo Essentials, here in Jinja Wanyange , we decided to explore that opportunity.
We cold press avocado oil because we wanted to take something that is already available within our agricultural communities and find another way of using it.
Cold pressing mechanically extracts the oil without the intensive heat associated with some other extraction and refining processes.
Avocado oil naturally contains a high proportion of oleic acid, a monounsaturated fatty acid, and contains other naturally occurring components that make it interesting for cosmetic and personal care formulations.
But I don't want this story to become a chemistry lesson.
What excites me is much simpler.We can take an avocado grown here in Busoga and turn it into an ingredient that somebody else needs.Think about that for a moment.The same avocado that might sell cheaply during a season of abundance or eventually become too ripe to sell can enter another value chain once it is processed.
Now a soap maker can buy it.A hair-care business can buy it.A skincare formulator can use it.A retailer can sell it.And suddenly, the conversation is no longer only about how many avocados we can grow.It becomes about how much value we can create from what we grow.
And Maybe That Is the Bigger OpportunityI still think about those wasted avocados.
Because this story is bigger than avocado oil.Uganda is an agricultural country. Busoga itself produces an incredible amount of agricultural produce. Yet sometimes the first market doesn't work out, and we treat that as the end of the product's value.
Maybe we need to ask a different question more often.When a fruit cannot be sold fresh, what else can it become?When farmers produce more than the fresh market can absorb, where else can that harvest go?And when we talk about growing Uganda's agricultural exports, could we also talk about exporting more of what we make from our agriculture?
For one small business in Jinja, those questions led to a bottle of avocado oil.
Today, Lamalo Essentials produces cold-pressed avocado oil in Jinja, Uganda.
And every time I see it, I think about how ordinary its beginning was.
An avocado.Something many of us in Busoga have probably walked past thousands of times.
Except now, instead of asking only whether we can eat it or sell it fresh, we're asking:
What else can we make from it?
That is the question behind our avocado oil.
And if you're a soap maker, cosmetic formulator, hair-care business, beauty brand or simply someone looking for cold-pressed avocado oil .we would love for you to experience what we're producing here in Jinja.
Lamalo Cold-Pressed Avocado Oil UGX 40,000 per litre.
Wholesale and bulk enquiries are also welcome
Watsapp for order : +256708179457/+256778609836