Kenyan farmers stand to earn more if the government scraps the Mombasa tea auction and replace it with a blending and packaging facility that exports finished products to the international market.

Already Dubai, which does not produce any tea, has established the Dubai Tea Trading Centre (DTTC), which has become an important intermediary between production and consumption.

The facility combines warehousing, blending and packaging to provide the most complete and convenient solution for traders looking to maintain a stock capable of meeting the requirements of importers in the Middle East and the international market.

Domiciled at the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC), a free trade zone, the facility currently processes teas from 13 different countries.

According to Sunitha Murthy, customer relations manager at DTTC, at a fee, the multipurpose infrastructure offers the importers of teas from different countries limited free storage for limited periods, access to a tea blending unit, tea bag and loose tea packing facilities, tea tasting and in-house expertise and networking opportunities.

“Our members include tea producers, exporters, regional importers and international merchants, all attracted by our exclusive range of services, industrial clustering and the broad opportunities of our dynamic trade ecosystem and community,” she told People Daily.

While Sunitha did not give the volume of raw tea imported from Kenya to the facility by different traders for blending because of customer confidentiality, she acknowledged that most of the tea at the facility is sourced from Kenya, India and Sri Lanka.

Last year, over five million kilogrammes of tea passed through the facility for blending and packaging before being sold locally or exported. Because of the popularity of the facility, the government agency is currently building a bigger unit for the blending of the increasingly popular flavoured tea and another unit for the blending and packaging of coffee.

According to Jalal Balala, executive director of Al Azizah, a Kenyan businessman based in Dubai, Kenyans farmers are not getting the full value for their cash crop because of the brokers at the Mombasa auction.

“Kenya’s tea is the best in the world because of the climatic conditions where it grows and the virgin soils. It is superior in quality compared to other teas of the world and that is why the raw tea exported from Kenya is used to blend other teas to produce some of the popular blends available in grocery stores across the Arab world, US, Europe, Asia and other markets,” he said.

Balala imports, blends and packages Kenyan tea and coffee before he sells them to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) market and the rest to the international market. He said Kenya tea will fetch billions for the farmers and government if the country added value before it is exported.

To establish a blending and packaging facility like DTTC will not require billions of shillings but the revenue it will generate will be more because it will also blend other teas from the region like from Rwanda, Uganda and Malawi,” Balala said.

Dubai, he added, does not grow tea but it is making billions by only blending and packaging teas imported from other countries.

In the past the government has toyed with the idea of setting a system that could allow farmers, through their factories, to directly export tea and by-pass the brokers at the Mombasa auction who determine the price,, sometimes at the disadvantage of the farmers.

In June 2016, former Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Willy Bett directed tea companies and farmers’ organisations to directly seek external markets for the cash crop without going through the middlemen at the Port of Mombasa, who he said were fleecing farmers.

However, the government is yet to follow through the directive hence causing farmers to pay a bigger price for exporting raw teas.

Source: Mediamax

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