China and other Asian countries could emerge as Kenya’s next big coffee markets since the traditional buyers — Germany, France, Italy, the Nordic countries as well as the US — only give tariff concessions to unprocessed beans.
Talks are already at an advanced stage to import Chinese commodities under an agreed exchange with Kenya’s branded coffee. Similar deals are in the pipeline with other non-traditional buyers such as Japan and Algeria.
The push for new markets is driven by the need for value addition and branding, which have been discouraged by the traditional international buyers, who have slapped a 21 per cent duty on processed coffee in favour of green beans that they buy and then re-export. Some of the world’s leading coffee-exporting countries like Ethiopia and Brazil have branded their coffee along geographical lines, a practice borrowed from the highly successful champagne, the sparkling wine named after a province in France.
Due to political meddling in the coffee industry, Kenya has missed out on the opportunity to brand its coffee, and is said to be missing out on the prevailing high prices in international markets. Subject to approvals and availability of funds, Kenya could, for the first time in its coffee history, see its own homegrown special coffees being sold in both local and international markets.
The move is spearheaded by the Kenya Planters Co-operative Union (KPCU), the agency of small-scale coffee growers in Kenya, which is in the process of branding coffee from four of the country’s principal growing areas.
This will mark a departure from the existing coffee marketing practice, where the commodity that appears in the market may not be purely Kenyan coffee.
“We do not have a 100 per cent Kenyan coffee in the market,” a union official said, adding that cheap robusta from Uganda and Tanzania have found their way into Kenyan coffee.
