Two leading tea producers suffered losses running into millions of shillings in Kenya's Kericho district after a hailstorm damaged their crop.
Unilever Tea Kenya put its losses at over Sh65 million ($970,000). According to Francis Kaptich, a company spokesman, almost 620 tonnes of tea from four of its tea estates were affected. As a result, tea pickers who were due to go on leave in September will now take their leave in October.
The hailstorm losses came only a month after Unilever Tea announced it had posted a Sh123 million ($1.8 million) loss in the past six months because pricing problems associated with currency fluctuation. A Sh110 million($1.6 million) programme on management and staff restructure over the second quarter also ate into the firm’s earnings.
The hailstorm also destroyed some houses belonging to workers of Kenya Tea Packers, but the company’s CEO Timothy Chege said that no one was injured. James Finlay Limited also suffered a big setback when its tea and flower farms were destroyed and covered by heaps of hailstones. The branch chairman of the Kenya Plantation and Agricultural Workers’ Union, Samuel Omari, said that it will take two months for operations to fully resume in the company. The storms, which lasted two hours, damaged thousands of acres of farms on several estates. A research farm was also badly destroyed.
Omari confirmed that the 10,000 employees on the farms will be idle for two months until the situation would improve and were in dire need of relief food supplies since their source of income had been interrupted.
The news comes at a time when tea prices are expected to drop slightly due to the onset of the Muslim holy month of Ramadhan. Most Kenyan tea is consumed by countries with large Muslim populations. Although auction quantities were expected to increase in coming weeks, the latest developments will change that forecast.
