By Henry Kinyua
Welcome to this weeks’ edition of the HK Coffee Market Summary: Sale number 21
The Coffee aroma continued to permeate the walls of trading at 2nd floor Wakulima House along Haile Selassie Avenue where the Nairobi Coffee Exchange is located as sale 21 took place on Tuesday 19th March 2024. Online trading as usual also took place and the sale was completed successfully.
The volumes traded increased to 23,930 bags from 20,281 traded in sale 20 last week. The average price increased to $248 from $ 232 per bag achieved last week. This average price is equivalent to Ksh 100 per kilo of Cherry at the trading floor. The total earnings from the auction was $7,295,208 or 956m, which is a significant increase from $5,786,468.20 last week.
The highest price from the sale was $455 from Kiamugumo coffee factory that is part of New Ngariama FCS in Kirinyaga county. Other factories whose coffee fetched more than $400 per bag include Kii factory, Karimikui, Kerugoya and Kabingra from Kirinyaga County. Others included Gichatha-ini, Gakundu, Kamwangi and Kiunyu. At total of 847 bags or 4% of all bags traded fetched more than $400 per bag.
A total of 17,459 bags or 73% of all coffee traded were top grades AA and AB.
Also to estimate the price per kg of cherry from these market reports, lets say $455 that was highest price paid per bag in this market, you multiply this number by the dollar rate lets say 135, you then divide the number by 50 because it is 50kgs per bag, then divide by 6.5 to get the kilos of cherry (455*135)=61,425/50=1229/6.5=189. So $455 per bag as per this report is equivalent to Kshs 189 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 23,930 bags of coffee were presented to the trading and were all bought at the auction. The number of brokers selling coffee at the auction were 11.
Kirinyaga Slopes led the pack by successfully trading 8,343 bags at an average price of $292 that was also the highest average price by any broker. Alliance Berries followed closely trading 5,226 bags at an average price of $239 . New KPCU traded 3,582 bags at an average price of $251. Baringo Kawa Brokerage Company, the latest entrant also presented 247 bags for trading and received an averaged price of $206.
Coffee Buyers
A total of 17 buyers participated at the auction. The top 5 buyers led by Kenyacof at 26% and C.Dormans at 23% bought 84% of the coffee traded. Others included Ibero at 17%, Sasini at 12% and Taylor Winch at 6%.
In the category of the least volume procured by a buyer, we had Mokal Coffee Ltd purchasing 22 bags at the auction.
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