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A Word from the CEO
Time flies so fast, I can’t believe that the spring is already here. If you are a gardener, you’re thinking about going out to get your garden ready for planting, as well as what to plant and probably anything you have to get fixed. As you think about these things, it’s also necessary to consider how you would preserve the fruit of your harvest, knowing that you only have a limited period of time to grow your crop. Note that preserving the fruit of your harvest is as important as preparing the soil, planting timely and correctly, weeding and watering to ensure you optimize the performance of the seed that you plant. In fact, I’d say post-harvest losses is not just wastage of what you lose to spoilage, but also wastage of all the energy you’ve put in to get a good harvest, from soil preparation to harvest. One way to preserve your crop, especially fresh produce you grow in your kitchen garden such as fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices is by sun drying. Our portable solar food dehydrator, the Dehytray™ was designed to enable solar drying of crops with ease. Just prep your produce (wash, peel if necessary, slice, or even season/flavor as applicable), place on the tray and take outside for free natural sunshine to do its job. Can you imagine what the outcome would be? Hmm, yummy! We hope you’d consider taking advantage of our spring sale discount prices on our Shopify store at www.juatechnology.com Check out our new pricing scheme that gives you more discounts as you purchase more units.
Wishing you a wonderful spring season!
Klein Ileleji, PhD
Cofounder & CEO
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Is your Dehytray not working?
Take a look at the picture below - do you notice anything amiss? That's right! One of our dear customers forgot to remove the protective blue film from the acrylic sheets that form the lid of the Dehytray. Unfortunately, this isn't an isolated incident. We had to devise a way to educate our users on the proper use of the Dehytray. If the blue film isn't removed, sunlight can't penetrate the tray, causing food to take longer to dry or not dry at all.
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We needed a quick, simple and cheap solution - stickers! Now we stick these warning stickers on all outgoing orders.
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Now, hopefully, new customers will immediately see that they need to remove the film before operating the product. We have made stickers in both English and Kiswahili as we want our Kenyan customers to be able to read them too. Unfortunately, we did not have the stickers available for the 8,000 units we sold to the Kenyan government. However, as in any startup, there is always a steep learning curve. |
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Big Changes This Spring
Our goal has always been to make the Dehytray more affordable - not only for our East African customers but also for our customers back home in the USA. We have brought our price down from $139.50 to $117.79 per unit, AND we offer free shipping now!
For even more savings, we are offering a volume discount:
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Looking to retail the Dehytray in stores in the U.S.
We are still yet to sell the Dehytray™ in a major brick-and-mortar store in North America, which if we do, would reduce the retail cost and hence retail price to customers. If you have connections to any major brick-and-mortar store, which you think might be a great outlet to retail the Dehytray™, we’d be glad if you can connect us with them. Please reach out to me at Klein.ileleji@juatechnology.com. Additionally, if you are a non-governmental organization, community organization or faith-based organization working locally or overseas to overcome food insecurity, please reach out to us to explore how we could partner together to help people and communities preserve the food they grow in a hygienic, safe and cost effective way using solar drying.
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What does the future hold?
We know that we need to reach more people. Reaching more people will allow us to have a bigger impact on food security, nutrition and environmental conservation by reducing energy use. We have gotten serious with our social media outreach - we’re sharing recipes, success stories and issues of global food security on our Instagram and Twitter pages.
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From around the globe
Help us connect with Communities around the world
Like I mentioned in our January newsletter, we are looking to develop beneficial partnerships with organizations and businesses so that we are able to make the Dehytray™ available at a lower cost to communities around the world that need it most. Every unit sold in North America enables us to sell a unit at a discounted rate in a developing country. Last year, our staff in Kenya collaborated with the Kenyan Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock to teach elementary school children in 4-K clubs (similar to 4-H clubs in the U.S.) how to preserve food by solar drying. We also donated two Dehytray™ units to each elementary school where training was provided to the school children and staff. Our goal with this collaboration is to help these schools preserve some of the fresh produce they harvest from their school kitchen gardens, which is used in the school’s feeding program. Please let us know if you’d be interested in these types of projects.
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From around the globe
Help us connect with Communities around the world
Like I mentioned in our January newsletter, we are looking to develop beneficial partnerships with organizations and businesses so that we are able to make the Dehytray™ available at a lower cost to communities around the world that need it most. Every unit sold in North America enables us to sell a unit at a discounted rate in a developing country. Last year, our staff in Kenya collaborated with the Kenyan Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock to teach elementary school children in 4-K clubs (similar to 4-H clubs in the U.S.) how to preserve food by solar drying. We also donated two Dehytray™ units to each elementary school where training was provided to the school children and staff. Our goal with this collaboration is to help these schools preserve some of the fresh produce they harvest from their school kitchen gardens, which is used in the school’s feeding program. Please let us know if you’d be interested in these types of projects.
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Recipe of the Month: Dried Mangoes
Get ready to tantalize your taste buds with the deliciousness of homemade dried mangoes! You don't have to rely on store-bought versions, as making your own is a breeze. All you need is a Dehytray, and you'll be enjoying your own scrumptious dried mango in no time. Even better, mango is a tropical fruit that's available all year long as you can easily find it in the freezer aisle of most major supermarkets. So, don't wait for the perfect season to savor this tropical treat - make your own dried mangoes this Spring and indulge in their sweet and chewy goodness!
Ingredients:
- 3 whole mangoes
- (or) a bag of frozen mango pieces
Instructions:
1. Wash fruit with clean water, cut and separate the fruit flesh from the center seed
2. As with any drying, the thinner the slices, the faster will be the drying process. If you are using frozen mango cubes - cut them in half to increase the drying surface.
3. Lay out the slices on the Dehytray (black tray) with the lid on and the vents open and set it out in the Sun to dry. Allow air circulation to the bottom of the tray.
4. You could flavor mango slices by dipping in lemon juice, or provide your own unique flavor with black pepper, ginger powder, etc. Be adventurous!
5. Depending on the thickness of your slices, and available sunshine in your region it could take from 8 - 72 hours to dry.
6. Because mango has quite a bit of natural sweetness, mango slices will stick to the tray during drying. Use your scraper included with the Dehytray to peel off sticking slices from the tray.
7. Luckily for you, the Dehytray will keep pest, livestock, birds and large insects from getting at your precious produce. Further, dust and pollen cannot easily settle on your dried fruit.
8. So how do you know when dried mangoes are done? We’ve taken the guess work out for you by including a simple hygrometer for measuring the water activity, a measure of dryness and ability of your product to support mold growth.
9. To measure whether your mangoes are sufficiently dry for storage, insert a handful of dried mangoes in a plastic jar or Ziploc™ plastic bag, insert the hygrometer such that you can see the reading and seal tight. Wait for 15 min; if the large units (RH%) reads below 60%, your mango is sufficiently dry; otherwise if above 60%, place back in tray to keep drying. The lower the %RH, the drier will be the product and the longer it would preserve.
10. Lastly, make sure you store your dried mangoes in an air-tight container, otherwise it could re-absorb enough moisture to the point of supporting mold growth. Don’t be tempted to eat all your dried treats in a go. A handful of dried mangoes could be several fresh mangoes. Enjoy your treat!
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From Dehytech East Africa Limited
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Dehytech East Africa Ltd was privileged to attend a farmer’s day at Waruhiu ATc –Githunguri to show case our drying technology to prevent post-harvest losses. We were invited by SNV in their program for Veggies for Planet and People.
The exhibition was successful and we managed to get people who were interested not only to dry fruits and vegetables for preservation but also for commercial purpose. We realized the area is very productive. Farmers mostly grow bananas for export. We encouraged people to preserve the surplus they get from their farm in order to have some for use when out of season. Solar drying using our Technology will also increase their profitability especially when they dry bananas/plantains for commercial purpose.
People were very much thrilled and appreciated our technology since they can use it regardless if they have farms or not. They can actually buy from producers and then preserve. Most people said they will get back to us when ready with finances.
Drying using our solar dryer is very cheap since it doesn’t use electricity in drying and also after drying. Our Dehyttray can dry nearly all our products from the farm.
Dehytech East Africa ltd is committed to assist farmers to get this sustainable solution through training and demonstration. If you would like to book a training session with us Email us naomi.mutisya@dehytechafrica.com or call +254700609830.
Thank you.
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