Innovation in Kenya
Kenya purple tea
KENYA
Kenya faces many challenges in its dominant market of low price commodity tea exports. It is moving on many fronts toward premiumization, especially through its clonal purple tea, localized specialty orthodox production, and government tea directorate activism.
A long drought has reduced bush growth rates. A three-week strike of 16,000 tea workers that began in mid-October halted processing costing growers $4 million and escalated social unrest. The 2017 harvest may be the lowest on record. Tea and coffee exports are no longer the nation’s largest source of foreign exchange.
This is a situation of “Innovate or die.” There are a variety of promising initiatives. The main one is purple tea, a genuine landmark in tea history. This is the clonal tea developed by the Kenya Tea Research Institute, over a 25-year period. It is drought-resistant and high yield with a heavy concentration of anthocyanin, an antioxidant with possible health benefits. It gives the leaf its purple color.
Purple tea production in late 2016 was reported as 10 million kilos out of a total of around 430 million kilos. Takeup was hampered by factory quality control problems in shifting from bulk black tea to specialty tea. In addition, smallholder “cottage” farming was blocked by the license requirement of 250 hectares of land. That has been reduced to just 20.
Purple tea is in high demand in Asia. Growers report prices of $30 a kilo versus $1-3.50 for traditional commodity tea.
The government has set a target of 25 million kilos of specialty tea. So far there are only tiny steps towards that goal, but they are encouraging.
Emrok’s black teas have won international awards. Kenya Silverback white tea has an outstanding reputation. A major blockage to specialty production has been lack of distribution. In the summer of 2017, the tea directorate made an agreement with International Tea Importers, an LA-based firm, to buy Kenyan purple tea in bulk and store it for distribution in 25 warehouse locations. The Mombasa tea auction, the world’s largest, is being extended to trade green, white and purple tea.