By Bob Koigi
KIAMBU, KENYA: More than 3,500 tea farmers in Njunu Tea Factory, Thika are processing their own tea and selling it to global markets.
The value addition is earning them more than double. This is higher compared to what their counterparts who supply raw green leaf to factories and tea brokers earn.
Through savings and assistance from financial institutions, the factory has managed to secure equipment they use in the processing.
The value added tea, which is sold in Pakistan and Egyptian stores earn farmers on average Sh110 a kilo.
The price is double what tea farmers earned last year — the highest payment to small-scale tea farmers in the world. The process of adding value to the green leaf starts with farmers delivering the green leaf, which is then taken to the drying stage.
Moisture reduction
Here, fans blow in fresh air into the leaf to remove water and reduce moisture content from around 80 per cent to about 67 per cent, which is the agreed standard.
It is during this stage that taste is also still developed. The leaf then undergoes maceration, where it is torn to squeeze out the juices.
“The juices are being mixed into the dol, which are the finer particles. The leaf comes out as a mass with both the leaves which are torn and the juices, only that the juices now come out of the cells, because they have been squeezed,” said Mr Samuel Mwangi, the production manager at Njunu Tea Factory.
The next stage is fermenting through a continuous fermenting machine. “Oxidation happens, here where air is blown in. And the important chemical changes takes place in the juices that are produced, which are inherent in the leaf. When the juices come out we start fermenting,” added Mwangi. Fermentation takes about 100 minutes. The fermented ‘tea’ is then discharged to a series of conveyors into the drier. At 140 degrees centigrade, the drier reduces the moisture content from the initial 67 per cent to three per cent in less than 30 minutes.
“We keep moisture content at just three per cent to keep qualities of the tea and arrest any microbial activity, so contamination cannot occur after the drier. The process results in black tea that is ready for consumption.
Thereafter, the tea is taken to the Sharples. It is a series of sieves, which have got different sized holes. Like the first one, it is able to trap the big particles and then graded .
“As everything else is able to go down, there is the second sieve, which makes the tea finer,” said Mwangi.
Low capacity
However the grains are packed differently depending on the markets. For example Pakistan, prefer the biffer-sized grains while UK prefers smaller grains, which are packed in tea bags. It is a breakthrough that has assisted the tea farmers in the area easily diversify their markets. Most traders in Europe and Pakistan buy from the factory for repackaging.
“The difference we have noticed here is that because this is the final product, it fetches higher than delivering the green leaf,” said Aron Wamai, a tea farmer who delivers to the factory.
Although there have been efforts to encourage local processing and value addition of Kenyan tea, the processing still remains dismal. Currently only about 12 per cent of Kenya’s tea output is value-added. This is despite the premium returns realised from the sale of such tea. The rest is shipped out in bulk form and blended with teas from other producing countries. Last year, the country had a leaf processing capacity of 370 million kilos against a total leaf production of 369 million kilos.
