Keroche Breweries To Lay Off 250 Workers In 7 Days

Kenya’s Keroche Breweries has said it might be forced to lay off 250 workers in the next 7 days if it will not be allowed to reopen and continue with operations. Keroche has blamed Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) for frustrating its efforts to bounce back.
The local brewer says it has alcohol worth 512 million shillings in stock that needs to be sold or risk running into losses that will never be recovered.
“On 7th December 2022 KRA closed the factory and further issued agency notices to 36 Banks in Kenya. This completely collapsed all our business operations since we could neither produce sales nor access any financing from any of the banks to assist in settling the arrears,” said Keroche in a statement.
According to Keroche, the ground for closure was due to outstanding tax arrears of 322 Million shillings that accrued from February 2021. Failure to be up to date on the payments was explained to KRA as low business leading to poor cashflows that could not fully meet all the cash obligations of the company (taxes, utilities, salaries, suppliers, etc).
“We subsequently entered into a proposed payment plan with KRA but we could not manage to honor the same due to frequent interruptions by KRA,” added Keroche. “On 22nd December 2021 KRA re-opened, but unfortunately, the earliest our products could reach the market was on 27th December 2021. We only managed to sell for three days till the end of the year but KRA was on our case demanding the arrears.”
From 1st February 2022 to date, Keroche has remained closed with over 2 Million liters of beer worth about 512 Million shillings in their tanks which have fixed costs to a tune of about Kshs 30 Million required to maintain the same monthly.
“This has drained all our resources and unfortunately if nothing is done in the next seven days, we will be forced to drain down all the beer and lay down over 250 direct employees and thousands within our nationwide distribution network,” added the brewer.
The recent closures of the factory by KRA have created a lot of uncertainty on the company’s operations and future plans which if not addressed are likely to result to:
- Loss of 2 million Litres of beer in the tanks under fermentation worth Kshs.512
- Loss of 250 direct jobs originating from all over Kenya whose livelihoods depend on the existence of the
- Loss of income to thousands of Kenyans who are indirectly involved in the distribution
- Erosion of the Investors confidence both Local and Foreign
- The killing of our local industries leaves the Multinationals to monopolize our economy (killing of the goose that lays the golden egg).
The company is calling on President Uhuru Kenyatta to intervene.
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