Commodities

Coffee price drops further at auction on low quality beans

MBITHI

Nairobi Coffee Exchange chief executive Daniel Mbithi. FILE PHOTO | NMG

The price of Kenyan coffee declined two per cent in Tuesday’s sale as a downward trend continued at the auction.

Market report from Nairobi Coffee Exchange (NCE) indicates that a 50-kilogramme bag was on average sold at Sh23,460 this week compared with Sh24,000 in the previous sale. Lately, coffee has been registering lower prices attributed to lower quality beans delivered by farmers as the main crop season ends.

“It is expected that much lower average prices will be witnessed in the month due to lower quality of the beans that will begin to stream into the market,” said NCE chief executive Daniel Mbithi.

The auction has been enjoying high volumes of good quality beans from central Kenya in the last two months. The next crop of quality coffee is expected at the auction in July.

Coffee earnings improved by 63 per cent last month compared with a similar period in 2016 on the back of higher international prices and an increase in volumes at the Nairobi auction.

Statistics from the NCE show that the value of coffee sold last month stood at Sh9.3 billion ($90.97 million) compared to Sh5.7 billion ($55.51 million) that was sold in February 2016.

Subsequently, the volumes of the produce grew by 30 per cent from 13 tonnes in February last year to 16.9 tonnes in corresponding period in 2017.