The County’s efforts for the establishment of an Industrial Park has gained momentum following Monday’s visit by the county delegation teams from both the Executive and the Assembly to the Kenya Industrial Research and Development Institute(KIRDI) study tour on possible areas of collaboration to see the project kickstart.

KIRDI has so far collaborated with various counties on a wide range of projects that promote value addition.

Leading the delegation, County Executive Committee Member for Trade, Industrialization, Tourism, Cooperatives and Enterprise Development Martha Cheruto said the county administration is well set to have the project begin to support MSMEs, create employment and turn around the County’s economy.

According to KIRDI General Director Dr Ing Calvin Onyango, the industrial institute is keen on working together with counties to disseminate key information about the aggregation centres and opportunities for collaboration noting that their key focus is support to MSMEs to move from their current medium to large enterprises.

“The establishment of the aggregation centres in counties was reached in a meeting with the Council of Governors on how we can spur industrialization and we were given the mandate of spearheading the initiative,” said Dr Ing Onyango.

KIRDI deals with industrial development, electrical, mechanical and chemical engineering and allied processes research, software development, equipment design and fabrication, consultancy services and value addition in basic, speciality and consumer chemicals.

The Industrial Parks upon establishment aims at having a cluster of independent firms come together to gain economies of scale by sharing infrastructure and taking advantage of opportunities for bulk purchasing and selling, capacity building, extension services and waste management.

The delegation later visited Twiga Foods and Tatu City Special Economic Zone(SEZ)to familiarize themselves with the required trajectory for setting up an Economic Zone among them infrastructure, supply of power and water, and the sewerage system among other components.

Tatu City SEZ led by its Executive Vice President Solomon Mahinda urged the county delegation to put more focus on a master plan and an enabling environment to see the industrial park attract potential investors.

Hillary Kipchumba chair Co-op, Everlyn Tirop vice chair Trade, Assembly Committee Members for Trade and Cooperatives, Chief Officers Eliud Chemaget(Finance) Nixon Cheplong (Cooperatives) Ambrose Tarus (Trade) Municipality Manager Tito Koiyet and Municipality Chairman Julius Kitur were among delegation present.