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The Nairobian

BAT maintains it will not pull out of Kenya

Business

By Standard Reporter | Feb 23, 2016

A Tobacco farmer tends his crop in Changara Teso North.

BAT has ruled out the possibility of halting its business in Kenya over recent negative reports questioning its operations in the country.

The listed tobacco company added that it would not be working with farmers it has not contracted to support its leaf-growing operations.

The firm has been accused of refusing to buy tobacco from certain regions, whose leaders are now said to be mobilizing farmers to storm BAT leaf-buying centres over delays in purchase, and push the firm out of the area.

“BAT Kenya employs a purchasing model that ensures all our farmers are paid their dues for tobacco supplied not more than three days after delivery of the crop to our leaf-buying centres,” Connie Anyika, BAT’s area head of regulatory affairs, said in a media statement.

The company added that it would not change its buying structure to accommodate more than the 5,537 farmers it has contracted.

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The firm said it cannot go outside of this system as “the 1994 Rules prohibit anyone from purchasing tobacco from a farmer with whom he has no existing sponsorship agreement”.

“Besides this, we take careful measures to contract the farmers we partner with to only grow the amount of tobacco that we require, and would therefore, in any case, not purchase any additional tobacco from the market,” Ms Anyika added.

BAT said it also manages its farmers’ crops to ensure a specific quality of leaf. For instance, farmers are required to drop three lower leaves from their crops.

“This is a quality initiative exercised in many tobacco-growing areas where the two to three lower leaves whose grade turn out is normally poor and very light are deliberately dropped, leaving about 15 leaves on the plant,” Anyika said.

The impact of this is that the plant would has fewer leaves feeding on fertiliser and is, therefore, heavier. The company said this model triggered an improvement in yields among its contracted farmers from 1,350 kilogrammes per hectare to 1,600 kilogrammes.

Currently, tobacco is grown in 14 counties, with the sector producing over 25 million kilos of the product a year.