Market News

Traders withdraw tea from auction as price falls

Huge volumes of tea were withdrawn from the auction last week on account of low prices.

About 25.3 percent of the tea offered for sale was withdrawn, marking it the highest withdrawal this year as the price per kilo dropped from Sh220 to Sh212.

Two million kilogrammes of tea were withdrawn by sellers in anticipation of high prices in the near future.

“Out of 120,396 packages (7,810,000 kilos) available for sale, 89,830 packages (5,871,445 kilos) were sold with 25.38 percent of the packages going unsold,” said the East African Tea Traders Association. The volume offered for sale also rose by 328,880 to reach 5.8 million kilos from 5.3 million the previous sale.

Tea prices have been on a downward trend in the last two months but they had been rebounding in the last two sales as volumes offered fell on account of the ongoing drought.

The Tea Directorate had forecast the volumes will this year drop to 416 million kilos from a high of 474 million kilos last year.