The HK Coffee Market Summary: Sale number 23

By Henry Kinyua

Welcome to this weeks’ edition of The HK Coffee Market Summary: Sale number 23
The Coffee aroma continued to permeate the walls of the trading floor at the 2nd floor Wakulima House along Haile Selassie Avenue where the Nairobi Coffee Exchange is located and online trading platforms as Sale 23 took place and was completed successfully on Wednesday 3rd April 2024.

The change of the trade day from Tuesday to Wednesday was as a result of Monday being an Easter Monday holiday.

The volumes traded increased significantly to 33,480 bags from 25,930 traded in Sale 22 last week. The average price also increased to $246 from $237 per bag achieved last week. This average price is equivalent to Kshs 99 per kilo of Cherry at the trading floor.

The total earnings from the auction was $10,257,846.42 or Kshs 1.3b, which was a significant increase from $7,313,517 last week.

The highest price from the sale was $500 offered for 71 bags from Guama factory in Kirinyaga county. Guama factory named after Guama village is part of Baragwi Farmers Cooperative Society. They sold their coffee through the Alliance Berries Brokerage Company and the 71 bags fetching highest price were bought by Ibero Kenya Ltd. Other four factories Kiirimikui, Nyanja,and KII completed the top 5 factories whose coffee fetched more than $400 per bag.

All the 251 bags or 15,320 kgs. that fetched more than $400 per bag were all grades AA and were all from cooperatives in Kirinyaga County. All except Guama sold their coffee through Kirinyaga Slopes. I would like to congratulate these cooperatives from Kirinyaga for always being in the lead in selling high quality coffee and fetching top dollars for their coffee. I now hope that this will translate to more money into farmers’ pockets and many counties and regions will learn from Kirinyaga County on how to increase volumes and the quality of their coffee.

Back to the overall market, a total of 22,841 bags or 68% of all coffee traded was top grades AA and AB

To estimate the price per kg of cherry from these market reports, let’s say $400 that was highest price paid per bag in this market, you multiply this number by the dollar rate let’s say 132. You then divide the number by 50 because it is 50 kgs. per bag, then divide by 6.5 to get the kilos of cherry. So, $400 per bag as per this report is equivalent to Kshs 203 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

Nine brokers presented and traded coffee from their clients. Alliance Berries led the pack trading 8,559 bags at an average price of $262 per bag. They were closely followed by Kirinyaga Slopes with 8,379 bags at an average price of $244. New KPCU followed trading 6,685 bags at an average price of $261 per bag that was also the second highest average price achieved by any broker on the trading floor.

Mt Elgon Coffee Marketing Agency also returned to the market trading 824 bags at an average price of $200 . Kiambu Coffee Marketing Limited traded 1,277 bags at an average price of $244 per bag.

Coffee Buyers/Dealers

A total of 20 buyers participated at the auction. The top 6 buyers led by, C.Dormans, Kenyacof, Ibero , Sasini, Louis Dreyfus and Taylor Winch bought 84% of the coffee traded. In the category of the least volume procured by a buyer, we had Rockbern Coffee Group Ltd purchasing 16 bags at the auction.