Draft:BURN Manufacturing

BURN Manufacturing

BURN Manufacturing Ltd. is a cooking appliance manufacturer that is based in Nairobi, Kenya. The company manufactures biomass, electric, and liquified petroleum gas (LPG) and ethanol cooking stoves for the African market.

BURN's founding was initiated by Peter Scott in the United States in 2010. In 2014, its first completed manufacturing plant was opened in Kenya (BURN Manufacturing, n.d.; Owoko, 2024). Some of its products are the Jikokoa charcoal stove, and the ECOA brand sold appliances. The company allows them to lower the cost of some of their products because of revenue generated from carbon credits and through external funding (Reuters, 2024; Owino, 2025).

In 2024, Time included BURN in its list of the 100 most influential companies (Höije, 2024).

History

Scott's passion for cooking technology began in 1990 when he noticed the impact of charcoal making on the forests of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). In 2010 he became a cookstove consultant and founded Burn Design Lab and BURN Manufacturing on Vashon Island, Washington (BURN Manufacturing, n.d.).

In 2013, BURN launched commercial sales of its Jikokoa charcoal stove (Ashden, n.d.). The company started setting up stoves in Kenya but in 2014 opened a complete manufacturing plant (Lambe et al., 2014; Owoko, 2024). The factory is situated in Ruiru, Kiambu County, close to Nairobi (Reuters, 2024).

The company has received early financing from the Clean Cooking Alliance, as well as the United States Overseas Private Investment Corporation, Acumen, and General Electric. According to the Clean Cooking Alliance case study, the alliance donated US$500,000 to build BURN's manufacturing plant (Clean Cooking Alliance, n.d.). Acumen subsequently made an investment in the company and helped it through a restructuring of its early debt (Acumen, 2024).

BURN's initial efforts were primarily around charcoal and wood-burning appliances. It subsequently diversified its product line to LPG products, ethanol, electric pressure cookers, and electric induction cookers (Owino, 2025; Reuters, 2024).

Products and manufacturing

The Jikokoa, later also marketed as the ECOA Char, is a metal charcoal stove designed to use less charcoal than the conventional Kenya ceramic jiko. The company's wood-burning products include models in the kuniokoa range (Energy 4 impact, 2023).

A study was conducted with 1,000 households in the slums of Nairobi that investigated the introduction of the Jikokoa stove in the poorer households. The researchers said that those assigned to the stove burned about 40 percent less charcoal than the control group. It was also determined from the study that the first cost of the product was an important obstacle to adoption (Berkouwer & Dean, n.d.).

The Jikokoa was also tried in an independent field study of cookstove emissions in Africa and Asia. The study found that it is a BURN Design Lab product created by BURN Manufacturing in Nairobi (Champion & Grieshop, 2019).

Later BURN introduced electric pressure cookers and induction cookers under the name ECOA. An evaluation of early BURN electric pressure cooker adoption in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda was undertaken as part of the Modern Energy Cooking Services program. It collected data from 324 households.

The study showed that the cookers could result in savings in cooking time and money, especially for the charcoal-using households. It also discovered that most households had another cooking appliance in addition to the electric cooker (Leary et al., 2023).

BURN also implemented a pay-as-you-cook program for a couple of electric products. The system enables customers to make low payments via mobile money before they become the complete owner of an appliance (Mwangi, 2025).

Financing and Expansion

BURN's business model includes carbon finance. Efficient cookstove projects may generate carbon credits based on calculated reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions. These are then marketable, and the proceeds from the sale of these can be utilized to lower the price of the stoves (Reuters, 2024). BURN has also received financing from development-finance institutions in the form of grants, loans, bonds, and investment to expand its manufacturing and distribution.

The first US$10 million green bond was issued by BURN in October 2023. The company said the money would go towards increasing capacity in Kenya and establishing a manufacturing facility in Lagos, Nigeria. (Otieno, 2023).

In October 2024 the European Investment Bank (EIB) signed a financing agreement to increase BURN's electric-cooking facility in Kenya, Tanzania, and other African markets, valued at approximately US$ 15 million. The project focuses on designing, making, and selling internet-enabled induction cookers and lease-to-own payment systems. The bank estimated it would support a total of approximately 1.3 million induction cookers in 5 years (European Investment Bank, 2024).

In May 2025, BURN received US$5 million through an investment facility supported by the European Union. The money was to be used to expand the firm's electric-cooker hire-purchase initiative to reach at least 100,000 more people (Mwangi, 2025).

BURN subsequently became a partner in a regional financing program with the Trade and Development Bank, the World Bank, and Ignite Power the following month. The US$80-million offering was split between BURN and Ignite Power. No details have been provided regarding the amount provided to each company. BURN stated that its share would fund the deployment of some 429,000 cooking stoves in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique, and Zambia (Owino, 2025).

In 2024, Time reported that BURN had sold over 4.5 million stoves in Africa (Höije, 2024). The company informed the Associated Press that in 2026, it has so far delivered over 7.3 million appliances in 11 countries in Africa. (Associated Press, 2026) The figures have been reported at various times and have been subject to information provided by the company.

Carbon-credit Model

In 2023, BURN introduced forward contracts and options based on carbon credits expected from an electric-cooking project in Ghana. Time called the initiative Africa's first carbon-credit futures program linked to the reduction of emissions from efficient cookstoves (Höije, 2024).

There has been debate over the use of carbon credits in the broader cookstove sector. The calculations of carbon credit rely on assumptions of stove use, fuel consumption, deforestation, and what cooking method is being replaced.

A 2024 study cited by Reuters suggested that the cookstove initiatives in its sample had been propping up more credit than the emissions savings they measured merited. Key points of the study were challenged by standards bodies and cookstove manufacturers, who started to apply updated calculations (Reuters, 2024).

Carbon finance was a key factor for BURN, as it enabled them to sell appliances at discounted rates, Reuters reported. The company's chief commercial officer Chris McKinney also stated that emissions savings from electric stoves might be easier to quantify than some biomass stoves (Reuters, 2024).

The sector-wide findings did not establish that every BURN carbon project had overstated its emissions reductions.

Recognition

In 2015 BURN won an Ashden Award in the cooking-stoves category. At the time of the award, Ashden reported that the company had sold more than 62,000 Jikokoa stoves and employed 87 people in Kenya (Ashden, n.d.).

BURN was named to Time's 2024 TIME100 Most Influential Companies list. The publication featured the company's electric cooking solutions and its application of carbon finance for the distribution of appliances (Höije, 2024).