By Henry Kinyua
Welcome to this weeks’ edition of the HK coffee market summary, Sale number 10.
The Coffee aroma continued to permeate the trading walls on the 2nd floor of Wakulima House along Haile Selassie Avenue where the Nairobi Coffee Exchange is located as sale 10 took place on Tuesday 19th December 2023. The online trading took place as usual and the sale was completed successfully.
The volumes continued to increase to 23,167 from 20,199 that was traded last week. The average price also increased to $194 per 50 kgs bag from of $187 per50 kgs traded last week. This average price is equivalent to Kshs 86 per kilo of Cherry. The total earnings also rose to $5350649.70 or Kshs. 829 M as compared to $4,618,074.3 or Kshs 693M earned last week.
Kirinyaga county through their Kirinyaga Slopes Coffee Brokerage Company Ltd also continued to make their presence felt in the market. In their second entry to the trading floor, they traded 4,444 bags at an average price of $213 per bag equivalent to Kshs 94 per Kg of cherry at factory gate. This was almost double the volumes traded last week and a 12% increment in the average price.
One point I would like to clarify is that a report of one sale doesn’t reflect the total sales and returns from any factory or cooperative or county.
Coffee is harvested, pulped, dried, milled and traded at different times. Factories and estates take coffee to the market in multiple sales before they can compute the final price paid for all their coffee traded. So, one sale or even a couple of sales are not enough to arrive at the final price paid to farmers but it is a good directional indicator of how the market is expected to perform.
Also, to estimate the price per kg of cherry from these market reports let’s say 304 that was highest price paid per bag in this market, you multiply this number by the dollar rate let’s say 15, you then divide the number by 50 because it is 50 kgs per bag, then divide by 7 to get the kilos of cherry.
For example, (304 x 155) = 47,120/50 = 942/7 = 134. So, $304 per bag as per this report is equivalent to Kshs 134 per kg of Cherry
In this sale 23,167 bags of coffee were traded at the auction. The value of coffee traded was $5350649.70 or Kshs 829 M . The number of brokers selling coffee at the auction were 8 compared to 10 last week. Alliance Berries continued the lead trading 21% of the volumes at the auction closely followed by New KPCU, Kirinyaga Slopes ,Kipkelion at 9% and KCCE in that order. The 5 companies traded 87% of the volumes traded.
The highest price paid for coffee in this sale was $304 per bag from Kiamugumo Factory which is part of New Ngariama FCS in Kirinyaga County and was purchased by C.Dormans. The total number of bags that attracted a price of $300 and above were 222. The top grades AA and AB comprised 57% of the volume traded.
Coffee Buyers
A total of 14 buyers participated at the auction. The top 5 buyers led by Kenyacof at 32% bought 90% of the coffee traded. Others included Ibero at 18%, C.Dormans at 17% ,Sasini at 14%, and Louis Dreyfus Company at 8% taking the 5th position . In the category of the least volume procured by a buyer, we had Global Mark Foods Ltd purchasing 2 bags at the auction.
