Earnings from tea exports to India surged by nearly three quarters in the first half of 2025, overtaking industrial carbonates, or soda ash, to become the country’s top export to Asia’s third-largest economy.
India bought tea valued Sh1.97 billion between January and June 2025, data collated by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) shows, a 73.4 percent jump over Sh1.14 billion in the same period of 2024.
Shipments of Kenyan tea to India increased by 65.89 percent in volume to 7.83 million kilogrammes in the review period from 4.72 million kilogrammes a year earlier
The jump saw tea dethrone carbonates and percarbonates, or simply soda ash, whose exports to India fell by 24.4 percent to Sh916.98 million from Sh1.21 billion a year earlier.
Volumes of the chemical exports, mainly disodium carbonate used in glass and detergents manufacturing, dropped to 31.17 million kilogrammes from 34.21 million kilogrammes.
India is one of the markets which has in the past been listed by Kenya Export Promotion and Branding Agency (Keproba) as difficult to penetrate.
“We realise the Indian market has risen in terms of sophistication and even the demand must correspond to needs of the niches in the market. We are marketing key products into the market by developing a targeted IMC (Integrated marketing communications) plan,” Keproba told the Business Daily in a past emailed response.
Besides tea and soda ash, Kenya’s exports to India include pigeon peas and coffee.
The bump in exports to India comes against the backdrop of a sector-wide downturn amid global tea prices slump which eroded earnings for farmers.
KNBS data show that total tea export earnings fell by 13.41 percent in the first half of 2025 to Sh176.76 billion from a record Sh204.14 billion the previous year — the first decline since the 2017/18 fiscal year.
The setback has rippled through the value chain, dealing a heavy blow to hundreds of thousands of smallholder farmers who rely on the crop as their main source of income.
Farmers affiliated with the Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA), for instance, earned between Sh0.80 and Sh19.10 less per kilogramme of green leaf in second payments — the annual bonus — during the year to June 2025 compared with the previous cycle.
KTDA blamed the reduced payouts on the strengthening of the shilling, which averaged Sh129 to the US dollar, compared with Sh144 the year before, wiping out an estimated Sh15 for every dollar earned.
“The drop in tea prices was largely driven by huge tea stocks that had built up during the reserve price window, which was only removed in October 2024,” KTDA said via email mid-October.
“Geopolitical challenges and instability in key markets such as Pakistan, Russia, Sudan and Iran also affected demand, though the situation has now slightly stabilised.”
The pain for smallholder farmers was compounded by a drop in demand from Pakistan, Kenya’s largest tea market. KNBS data show that Pakistan — which accounts for about 40 percent of total exports — slashed its imports by 12.96 percent, with earnings from the destination falling to Sh74.01 billion in the first half from Sh85.03 billion the year before.
This marked the first drop in tea exports to Pakistan since the 2018/19 financial year when earnings from the South Asian nation fell by nearly 25 percent.
KTDA data show that average prices per kilogramme of made tea fell across all major producing regions — from Sh385 in 2023/24 to Sh322 in 2024/25. In Central Kenya, farmers in Kiambu earned Sh371, down Sh46, while those in Murang’a and Nyeri fetched Sh376 and Sh388, down Sh42 each.
The steepest declines were in the Rift Valley and Western regions: Kericho farmers earned Sh245, down Sh101, Bomet Sh209 (down Sh85), and Nyamira Sh266 (down Sh106).
