Ceylon Tea coming from the resplendent island nation, Sri Lanka is recognized for her well balanced tasting profile by tea connoisseurs all over the globe. African nation, Kenya is also known for their coloury CTC teas ideal for milk tea. As Citizen Digital had reported, His Excellency The President of Kenya Uhuru Kenyatta has decried the lack of value addition on Kenyan tea as one of the reasons why the green gold is not fetching in as much revenue.

Mr. Kenyatta, speaking in Mombasa mentioned that Kenya still exports her tea in bulk form while countries like Sri Lanka are adding value to theirs and end making a lot more money.

“In 2018, Kenya exported 476 million kilograms of tea, earning 140 billion shillings. Sri Lanka on the other hand exported 288 million kgs, which is about 60% of our exports. However, they earned an equivalent of 150 billion shillings,” said the Head of State.

But Sri lankan tea production is based on “Pure Orthodox” method which is more costly and labour intensive. Kenyan manufacturing method is mainly CTC (Cut Tear Curl). Kenya applies machine plucking. But Ceylon Tea is hand plucked. So the COP (Cost of Production) for Ceylon Tea is much higher than Kenyan Tea.

“The higher earning for lesser tea than ours is largely due to their ability to export close to 50% percent of their teas in value added form, compared to us who export 98% of our tea in bulk form. To earn more value from our tea, we need to add value to it before exporting it.”

According to Citizen Digital, The Sri Lanka Export Development Board, on their website, lists samples of their value added product range as including; green tea, flavoured tea, organic tea, instant tea, iced tea, as well as ready-to-drink tea.

Citizen Digital also claims that Sri Lanka adds more value to her tea than the other tea producing nations and this assists them fetching a higher price in the world market.

Some of novelty products the board also claims to have added to this range are tea-based soap, bath gel, shampoo and cosmetic products.

To further assist the Kenyan tea do better in the export market, President Kenyatta said: “Going forward, I have directed the National Treasury, the Ministry of Trade and Industry, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Attorney General to finalise and gazette the newly developed Tea Regulations (2019) within the next two weeks.”

“These regulations include: establishment of the Green Leaf Pricing Formula Committee to determine the formula for pricing of green leaf; the establishment of a self-sustaining stabilisation fund to cushion farmers against price fluctuations and ensure implementation of guaranteed minimum returns; establishment of Kenya Tea Council; and regulation of the volume of teas sold through the Auction and through Direct Sales/ Direct Contracts to be set at 80% Auction and 20% Direct Sales window.”

President Kenyatta also ordered the Agriculture Ministry and the Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK) to strip off roles of Kenya Tea Development Authority (KTDA) directors as a recourse means to recoup gains for tea producers.

View More Latest Tea News + Articles: http://www.teawithnipun.com/

References

1. Original Post: https://citizentv.co.ke/news/iced-tea-soap-shampoo-how-sri-lanka-exported-less-tea-than-kenya-but-earned-more-312049/