La Distillerie Béninoise

Sodabi is a local palm spirits made in West Africa. Some may say it’s Benin national liquor.

Sodabi is usually made with rudimentary means in rural villages, and often stored in used jerrycans. As a result, the end product can be of a rather low quality.

Back in 2012, Jake, Power:On’s Technical Director, asked himself why this wildly popular product had never been produced industrially or been commercially exported from the region.

Banking on what he saw as a tremendous opportunity, Jake invested his own savings as well as mobilized other funds to launch a modern distillery from the ground up. The plan that started in his garage has now grown to a 150m² facility operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Today, La Distillerie Béninoise employs 9 people.

His product, commercialized under the Tambour brandname, has gained international recognition and won awards in the 2015 San Francisco World Spirit Competition and the 2017 New York’s International Spirits Competition. In under 10 years, Tambour has transformed what was only known as a cheap, poor quality liquor to a spirit competing with the finest whiskys and rhums and being sold across 3 continents.

If you want to learn more about La Distillerie Béninoise, you can find more information on their website at www.tambour-original.com

This example is yet another proof that Africa has enormous potential to transform its local raw materials into export ready products, adding value locally by creating wealth and sustainable economic employment.

This is the kind of project that Power:On can help your organization implement.

Bien Propre

Monitoring the COVID-19’s advancement in early 2020 from China to Western countries, Jake knew that the pandemic would be coming to Benin. It seemed obvious to him that there would be supply chain disruptions and a lack of necessary products needed to combat the crises.

In March 2020, Jake diverted resources of his company, La Distillerie Béninoise, to start producing hand sanitizer under the name Bien Propre. His rapid response leveraged WHO documentation on proper production of hand sanitizers enabling a quality product to be launched on the local market in just 10 days.

Not only did this product greatly help in the country’s pandemic response, but it also financially saved La Distillerie Béninoise whose existing clients largely consisted of tourists, an industry that was one of the most impacted by the pandemic.

This is why Bien Propre is a remarkable entrepreneurial success. It illustrates how entrepreneurs are able to read emerging trends and turn them into opportunities. It also shows that a large part of the entrepreneurial attitude is knowing when to pivot, and quickly adapt when external conditions change.

This is the kind of entrepreneurial mindset that Power:On can unlock in your organization.