By Henry Kinyua
Welcome to this weeks’ edition of the HK coffee market summary: Sale number 20
The Coffee aroma continued to permeate the walls of the 2nd floor at Wakulima House along Haile Selassie Avenue where the Nairobi Coffee Exchange is located as Sale number 20 took place on Tuesday 12th March 2024. Online trading also took place as usual and the sale was completed successfully.
The volumes traded decreased to 20,281 bags from 26,328 traded in sale 19 last week. Surprisingly the average price remained the same as last week at $ 232 per bag. This average price is equivalent to Kshs 99 per kilo of Cherry. The total earnings from the auction were $5,786,468.20 or Kshs 805m, which was a significant decrease from $ 7,510,865 last week.
Kirinyaga county through their Kirinyaga Slopes Coffee Brokerage Company Ltd also continued to make their presence felt in the market this season. They traded 5,267 bags at an average price of $240 per bag equivalent to Kshs 102 per Kg of cherry at the trading floor. This was almost double the volumes traded last week and a 12% increment in the average price.
The highest price from the sale was $463 from KII factory in Kirinyaga, the 3 lots that fetched more than $400 per bag were all from this factory.
This factory that is part of Rung’eto Farmers Cooperative Society has always had some of their coffee fetching the highest price. I would like to congratulate farmers from this region for their great efforts.
The other factories making to the top 10 list include Mutheka, Kiandu and Tambaya factory all from Nyeri County, Mugaya Factory, Kagumo factory, Kiangothe factory and Karii factory all from Kirinyaga county. So, the top 10 list was shared by the two neighbouring counties Kirinyaga and Nyeri. Congratulations to these farmers.
Also to estimate the price per kg of cherry from these market reports let us use $463 that was the highest price paid per bag in this market. You multiply this number by the dollar rate let’s say 139 then divide the number by 50 because it is 50kgs per bag, then divide by 6.5 to get the kilos of cherry (463×139) =64,357/50=1287/6.5=198. So, $463 per bag as per this report is equivalent to Kshs 198 per kg of Cherry at the trading floor.
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, 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 (Lots) 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 to be paid to farmers but it is a good directional indicator of how the market is performing
Brokers
In this sale, 20,307 bags of coffee were presented to the trading hall out of which 20,281 bags were bought at the auction. Three Lots of 26 bags received no bid. The number of brokers selling coffee at the auction were 7. Kirinyaga Slopes led the pack by successfully trading 5,267 Bags at an average price of $ 240. Alliance Berries followed closely trading 4,450 bags at an average price of $247 . Baringo Kawa Brokerage Company also presented 22 bags for trading and received an average price of $154.
Coffee Buyers
A Total of 20 buyers participated at the auction. The top 4 buyers led by Kenyacof at 26%, bought 74% of the coffee traded. Others included Ibero at 19%, C.Dormans at 18% and Sasini at 11%.
In the category of the least volume procured by a buyer, we had Mokal Coffee Ltd purchasing 22 bags at the auction.
