Tea price stays high despite UK lockdown

Workers harvest tea using a plucking machine in Kericho. PHOTO | TONNY OMONDI

By GERALD ANDAE
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Summary

• Tea prices at the Mombasa auction remained at a four-month high last week, even as concerns emerge that a new UK lockdown will pull them down in the short-term.
• A market report shows a kilogramme of the beverage on average fetched Sh211 in the second sale of the year, which is the same value that it attracted in the opening trading of 2021.

Tea prices at the Mombasa auction remained at a four-month high last week, even as concerns emerge that a new UK lockdown will pull them down in the short-term.

A market report shows a kilogramme of the beverage on average fetched Sh211 in the second sale of the year, which is the same value that it attracted in the opening trading of 2021.

The price defied high volumes that were offered for sale at the auction to register an impressive performance.

The good price saw the volume of tea withdrawn from the auction floor decline marginally from 14 percent in the previous sale to 13 percent during Tuesday trading.

“Out of 169,180 packages (11,226,497 kilos) available for sale, 147,740 packages (9,653,934 Kilos) were sold with 12.67 percent of packages remained unsold,” said East Africa Tea Traders Association.